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Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:53:13Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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{{Grimdark}}
'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence, however, couldn't care less about Willem's fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebrietas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and injecting the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church, famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procreate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[BLAM|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurence's protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnam's umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation, not that he minds.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the School of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:51:47Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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{{Grimdark}}
'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence, however, couldn't care less about Willem's fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebrietas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and injecting the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church, famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procreate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[BLAM|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurence's protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnam's umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation, not that he minds.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:50:59Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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{{Grimdark}}
'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence, however, couldn't care less about Willem's fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebrietas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and injecting the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church, famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procreate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[BLAM|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurence's protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnam's umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:48:53Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence, however, couldn't care less about Willem's fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebrietas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and injecting the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church, famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procreate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[BLAM|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:47:15Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence, however, couldn't care less about Willem's fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebrietas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and injecting the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church, famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:45:35Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspicious of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight (literally, he grew eyeballs inside of his own brain!) instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:42:53Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Church, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:42:14Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible.]] Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:41:36Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages [[RIP AND TEAR|aggressive, proactive action]]. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:38:19Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Bloodborne */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention, especially since it pretty much changed the name of the genre from souls-like to souls''bourne''). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:30:47Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls III */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:29:42Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls II */

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{{Grimdark}}
'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way to break free of the cycle.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:28:27Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls II */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC, so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:26:26Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls II */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:25:58Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls II */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character, the Bearer of the Curse (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1), has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is more elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:23:35Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls I */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1) has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is more elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:21:20Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls I */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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, who 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1) has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is more elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:19:32Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dark Souls I */

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'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===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 people 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 man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 afromentioned 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, who 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1) has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is more elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Dark Souls

2021-06-19T08:14:08Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: This makes no sense.

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{{Grimdark}}
'''Dark Souls''' is a game [[Dwarf Fortress|all about dying. Over and over and over and over.]] Except this time it occasionally has [[monstergirls]].

Dark Souls is a third person RPG created by From Software and Namco Bandai Games. It is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls (would have been sequel, but the developers lost the rights to the Demon's Souls name), and is considered by some of its playerbase to be one of the hardest games ever created, which is '''very''' wrong. Veteran players will tell you that the game is exceedingly fair, and you only die as a result of your own fuckups. Just be ready to fuck the fuck up again and again until you learn it. And since it generally rewards skill and being a munchkin, it is popular in [[/v/]]-circles for its punishing gameplay.

For reference, imagine a fantasy tabletop game run by a [[Gamemaster|Killer DM]] who wants your character to die if you get the least bit sloppy with your Spot checks, don't [[Powergamer|optimize your build]] (though that makes things easier, it's not remotely necessary), and don't carefully study the rulebooks and monsters manuals before you even start playing (or you can just learn through trial and error like you're supposed to). Oh, and other players in other groups will occasionally come to your table and roll some dice to kill you, often before you can even roll initiative, for some [[loot]] and [[lulz]]. At the same time though, the Killer DM is also fair by making your frequent deaths more of an inconvenience then it might be (loading screens, ugh) so that you can learn through trial and error if nothing else so that you do eventually beat his challenges. That is pretty much the Dark Souls experience.

Relevant to /tg/ mainly in that people sometimes throw it around as "this is how you do a [[grimdark]] setting properly", "wouldn't it be cool to set a game in this setting?" (Answer: No, because the damn thing is so vague), and "the material GMs can rip off file". It also pops up semi-regularly as the catalyst for quest threads and more than a few worldbuilding threads, most notably [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Lost%20Source Lost Source].

Both [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197831/dark-souls-board-game Dark Souls] and the younger brother [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195856/bloodborne-card-game Bloodborne] have their own board game incarnations, with the former being a exploration dungeon crawler, and the latter a card game of collecting blood tokens and defeating monsters.

More pertinently, [[Fires Far Away]] is a homebrewed setting that owes its existence to the likes of Dark Souls, being designed for running games in a similarly-styled world.

Also explicitly said by the creator to have been heavily inspired by [[Berserk]], be it in its aesthetic, character similarities, or just blatant references. That has to count for something.

==Story==
One of the most definable aspects of Dark Souls is its method of storytelling... or lack thereof. Besides the opening cutscenes of all three games, nothing is outright explained to the player. Any lore you find is either based on dialogue with NPCs or descriptions of items and weapons, and even then it's often cryptic and intentionally vague, usually left up to interpretation. As you play through the games, a bigger picture becomes painted as you gather items and converse with the world's inhabitants, with the player connecting the dots and speculating what's happened. This can feel rewarding to someone who finds satisfaction in building the world piece by piece and interpreting things their own way, but understandably [[Rage|infuriating]] to anyone who wishes for something more straightforward. Much of the lore explanations that we have are often speculative or what little we know actually ''did'' happen, which isn't much.

===Dark Souls I===
At the beginning of time there was shit-all but a bunch of trees and dragons. Then there was fire (no we don't know how, put your hand down), and four people 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) and built the realm of man: Lordran. Things went pretty swell until the Witch of Izalith noticed that the fire was going out and tried to rekindle it, only for it to go wrong and become a horrifying abomination made of fire, cancer and evil. This spawned 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 afromentioned 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, who 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 madmess 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, supresses 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 decendants, 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 decendant 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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===Dark Souls II===
Your character (a different person than the Chosen Undead from DS1) has lost their memory as part of becoming undead and travels to the land of Drangleic to get it fixed. Drangleic has been ravaged by a war with an invading army of giants, and it really shows in places. Here you meet the Emerald Herald, a top-tier [[waifu]] who tells you to gather the souls of the four lords so you can meet king Vendrick and become a "true monarch," which is more elaborated on later on in the game.

[[Skub|While not necessarily a ''bad'' game by itself, many consider it the worst Souls game due to its clunky controls, enemy placements, and bland-ish bosses. Others point out that it has the best PvP, build variety and magic system in the series by far.]] A collected edition with extra content and all the DLC called Scholar of the First Sin was released later, patching up a few problems and adding a new final boss to attempt to tie up the narrative. However, one of the most controversial changes was altering the enemy placement and behaviour - sometimes drastically - which might have been fun for older players looking for replay value but made it even more difficult for new players.

This game is generally totally forgotten about by most, but still has enough of a fanbase that mentioning it on [[/v/|certain boards]] will reliably generate pages and pages of [[RAGE|strongly-opinionated]] [[skub|arguments.]]

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But one guy here actually happens to remember the story, and if you're not afraid of spoilers, here's what happens in it.
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You are again a Chosen Undead of sorts, this time called the "Bearer of the Curse", tasked with finding the pieces of the four Lords and do basically the same stuff you did in the first game: Artificially prolong the life of the First Flame and the Age of Fire. However, there are a lot of twists to it. Vendrick was the great King of Drangleic and, unbeknownst to him, built his kingdom directly on the ruins of Anor Londo, and even he wasn't the first lord after Gwyn to do so. At some time, a woman called Nashandra came along and seduced Vendrick. She convinced Vendrick to attack the Giants in a war that lasted generations and reduced Drangleic to ruins. As if that wasn't bad enough, the First Flame started flickering again and the Curse of Undead spread, slowly driving the remains of Drangleic into anarchy. Desperate to find a cure for the curse, Vendrick and his brother Aldia sent the undead away in the thousands and dedicated their lifes to disturbing experiments with this one single goal. However, in time, Vendrick realized that this was all a ploy of Nashandra to seize the first flame for herself, for in truth she was a fragment of Manus from the first games DLC so in a last bid to buy his brother time, he sealed Nashandra and himself away, hoping that someone would come to kill Nashandra and rekindle the first flame or find a way to cure the curse of the undead.

Aldia on the other hand, eventually succeeded in finding a cure for himself, but this came at the cost of the lifes of thousands of people and his own humanity, only to be damned to live a [[Grimdark|torturous existence for all eternity]]. Aldia however also uncovered the truth of how the world works: He discovered that rekindling the First Flame doesn't save the world; it merely stalls its eventual end and damns the people in it to do this forever in a repeating cycle of a kingdom rising, the curse of the undead reappearing, rekindling the First Flame and so on. As long as this cycle keeps going, humans are doomed to eventually become hollow. In his last, desperate attempt in trying to break this cycle, he artificially created a young girl from Dragon DNA ([[/d/|Try not to think to hard about it]]), called the Emerald Herald who will guide the Bearer of the Curse (that is, you) to become the True Monarch, who will either rekindle the Flame, plunge the world into darkness or seek a way out.

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===Dark Souls III===
The fire is going out yet again, but it's so terribly weak now that it might not even last another cycle. In desperation, the flame uses the little power it has in a last ditch plan. This sees the rise of the Unkindled, those Undead who tried but failed to link the fire back in a previous age and were turned to ash. In practice they're pretty much the true undead. Now the Unkindled seek to gather the resurrected Lords of Cinder, four powerful badasses who did pull it off back in their day but don't feel like trying it again. So it's your job to find them, kick their asses and use the cinders you take from them to link the fire yet again, or let it fade away completely, and so the Age of Darkness finally happens. Whatever is your decision, you are aided in it by the Fire Keeper of the Firelink Shrine, which is your hub world of the game where you can buy stuff, level up and advance the plot. Unlike the previous games, there is a third option: scattering the sparks of the First Flame amongst all of humanity. The Dark will then come and you will be the Lord of Hollows but the sparks will remain in everyone and as the human population increases the sparks of humanity will basically replace the fire and so the Dark will be slowly reduced as humanity rises again and Light returns to the world in a distant future. This also has made it somewhat popular to use in various Dark Souls crossover fanfictions as superpowers (such as aura in RWBY) can easily be explained by these sparks of the First Flame and also tying the Ashen One main character to the crossed series.

Due to it coming off the heels of Bloodborne, it takes many notes from it's cousin; a hub world, faster combat, and several other mechanical features. The game itself is remarkably Grimdark and depressing, both in tone as well as in the story.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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At this point in time, the cycle Aldia wanted to end has gone on for so long that the fabric of reality itself is slowly falling apart and different dimensions start to clash together like glaciers grinding against the earth. Different people of all manner of kingdoms eventually lit the fire, and the royal family of the Kingdom of Lothric eventually set itself up to produce people specifically for the purpose of rekindling the fire, culminating in the young prince Lothric. Lothric however, read about Kaathe, the Dark, and Aldia's discoveries in forbidden archives, and when it was time to rekindle the first flame again, he refused to do so, choosing to wait out the end of the world instead. This enacted a contingency plan of sorts, ressurrecting the Lords of Cinder, powerful entities and individuals that managed or were convinced to rekindle the flame in the past, to rekindle the flame in Lothrics stead. However, like Lothric, all but one, Ludleth of Courland, refused to take up their thrones and the other three, Aldrich, Saint of the Deep, Farron's undead Legion, the Abyss Watchers, and Yhorm the Giant made the choice Lothric made: Accept their fate and let the world end.

You make your way through the ruins of nearly every location of the first two games in some form or another but everything is decidedly bleak and horrific. Eventually, you face the Avatar of all past Lords of Cinder and face one of four decisions: Link the flame, Snuff out the flame and put the World to rest, usurp the flame and become the solution Aldia so desperately looked for, or simply take the flame for your own gains. Like a dick.

The game drives the point home that this may well be the very last time the flame could be linked, as all of the Lord of Cinders are horrible people that were appointed out of desperation; Aldrich was a cleric who, after a fateful encounter with the Dark, began cannibalizing his fellow priests and faithful. This went so far that his bloated body decayed into undead, but still conscient slurry. His first follower, Sulyvahn, founded the church of the deep as a means to seize power in Aldrichs native land, the hidden realm of Irithyll in a series of deeds so absolutely dispicable that they would give [[Honsou]] a run for his money (gave Aldrich thousands of people to devour, raped and enslaved Yorshka, Gywns bastard daughter, fed Gwyn's son Gwyndolin to Aldrich just moments before you arrive in ruined Anor Londo, corrupted the remaining gods to become his servants and many, ''many'' other things) and wanted to make Aldrich a Lord of Cinder, in the hopes that this will secure his power for all eternity. As far as Aldrich is concerned, he just really wants to eat everyone as long as he still able to.

The Abyss Watchers were an order of human knights descended from one of Gwyn's lieutenants, called Artorias, dedicated to the eradication of the Dark by the most literal means possible, they killed, murdered and burned uncounted millions of people and destroyed entire kingdoms at the slightest hints of corruption. The collective order was made a Lord of Cinder (combining the souls of its hundreds of members into one) as a means to escape the curse of undead so that they could continue their fight against the dark, but their process of resurrection got corrupted by said dark and they are all trapped in an endless, never ending battle to the death in their keep, unable to escape.

Yhorm the Giant was a king who started to care about his subjects as time went on but became increasingly depressed when he lost someone dear to him and swore to defend his unthankful subjects to the last. He was made a Lord of Cinder when the Profaned Flame, a corrupted fire born from the Dark, appeared as a means to stop it. As it turned out, it was all for naught; his people still hated him after his death, his kingdom, the Profaned Capital, was destroyed and everyone he tried to protect was killed.

As you can see, these people were the absolute bottom of the barrel; Aldrich became a Lord purely out of selfish reasons, the Abyss Watchers were in an eternal deadlock and Yhorm simply didn't care anymore. As if that wasn't enough, the "Link the fire" ending hints that the fire has grown so weak that it won't even survive another link. Luckily, (or unluckily) a group of followers of Kaathe, called the Sable Church, seemed to have found the answer Aldia from the second game so desperately looked for: To usurp the flame and elevate the Ashen One (you) to the Lord of Hollows to lead Mankind into its very own destiny. This does require a lot of preparation; you need to become a hollow yourself (Unkindled are different from regular undead), sacrifice a loved one and then defeat the Soul of Cinder.

Speaking of the Sable Church, the first DLC centers around the story of the first of the three Sisters who founded it; disillusioned with their cause and with no hope, she retreated into the Painted World of Ariandelle, which has its own predicament: It starts to rot. Normally, the guardian of the painting, Father Ariandelle would use his version of the Lordvessel to burn the entire painting and the world within to the ground, but the Sister, called Friede, convinced him to just let the rot happen. You get sucked into the painting by the Slave Knight Gael who seeks to help the girl who originally created the Painted World to create a new one, which leads into the second DLC.

In the second DLC, you look for Gael who went missing in the Ringed City, a city that Gwyn gave to the first humans as a token of gratitude for their help in the fight against the dragons, but in reality was little more than a fancy prison at the edge of the world. Gael was looking for the Dark Soul itself so that the Girl may finish a second painting that save everyone else in Lothric. When you meet Gael, so much time has passed that everything has sunk into dust. Dark Souls 3, and the trilogy ends in the most Dark Souls-esque way you can even think of: [[Grimdark|Two nobodys, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

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===Demon's Souls===
Technically the first in the series, since Dark Souls was supposed to be a sequel to this. Notably this game actually explains the story a bit more so you know what's actually happening.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a deep fog and the fog is slowly spreading. Nobody knows why and all who go into the fog never return. Eventually one of the kings knights, Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs, manages to find his way out and tells that King Allant XII has awoken the Old One, and now demons have overrun the land, stealing peoples souls and driving them into madness, with the fog marking how far they can go. He also tells how awesome and powerful the souls of the demons are, and so a bunch adventurers, including you, set out to Boletaria to kill demons and find a way to stop the fog. You eventually die at the end of the tutorial and wake up in the Nexus, your hub world, where a lady with <s>[[Zero Punctuation|pancakes stiched on her face]]</s> candle wax covering her eyes tells that your soul has been bound to the Nexus.

From there you wander throughout the land, seeking a way to stop the fog, whilst going through the five levels.

===Bloodborne===
While it was made by From Software as a spinoff to the Souls series, fans are still divided on whether or not it is officially a Souls game (but it deserves an honorable mention). Bloodborne changes the tone from the previous Souls games' Berserk-inspired medieval setting to a dark, gothic world which draws heavy influences from [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and Bram Stoker. The biggest differences in gameplay is the inclusion of guns to replace shields from Dark Souls, both as a (mostly shitty) ranged weapon and as a parry tool. Yes, you read that right: the Hunters in Yharnam, through painstaking research and unflinching dedication, have discovered that shooting somebody in the face is liable to break their concentration. This is what the cutting edge of national security looks like in Yharnam.

The player takes on the role of a foreigner who's come to Yharnam seeking its special healing blood, said to cure all wounds. One blood transfusion later, and you're plunged into a waking nightmare where horrific beasts roam the streets and hunters... er, hunt them. Upon your inevitable demise (or upon activating a mysterious lantern, if you're smart or talented enough to outrun or defeat the various horrors of Yharnam bare-handed), you are transported to the Hunter's Dream, a hub world for every hunter that partakes in the Hunt. The Dream's inhabitants consist of a waifu-tier Doll that helps level up the player, an old man in a wheelchair named Gehrman, and the freakish but reliable Messengers, who sell items and deliver messages. In contrast to Dark Souls' more cautious playstyle, Bloodborne encourages aggressive, proactive action. You are frequently outnumbered, enemies are less susceptible to being split off individually than previous Souls games, and you can regain lost health by damaging enemies within a small time frame. This encourages you to go on the offensive as much as possible, as well as putting enemies down as quickly as possible. Many characters and factions also differ in their nature from Dark Souls as well. Whereas many characters in Dark Souls, even the villianous ones, are more or less victims or circumstance, Bloodborne has no shortage of absolutely horrible people. The main faction that drove most of the events in the story (as explained in the spoiler section), the Healing Chruch, has to be one of the most evil factions ever devised. Whereas Dark Souls characters exist in varying shades of grey, nearly everyone in Bloodborne is evil in some way or form, including the player character.

Whilst initially a fairly conventional gothic horror setting, the game gradually morphs into a Lovecraftian cosmic nightmare. One of the in-game currencies - insight - is gained upon interacting with various characters, seeing horrific monsters, and consuming eldritch knowledge from the trepanned skulls of madmen. As your insight increases, you start noticing things that weren't visible before, like lanterns being covered with eyes or huge multi-limbed creatures perching on church spires (and yeah, they were always there). It also means the local shoggoth can blow your head off more easily. In a pretty big twist to the usual Lovecraft formula, the religion worshiping the Great Old One analogues are actually the overwhelming majority in Yarnham, not a hidden cult plotting in the shadows (although there are a few of those as well).
It garnered largely positive reviews, both from Souls fans and new players alike.

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Here's the backstory in detail.
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Hundreds of years ago, a civilization called the Pthumerians found the Old Ones, godlike cosmic beings who they worshipped as gods. Their late queen Yharnam had a particularly strong connection to them, but things started to go awry when she got pregnant with the Great One Mergo and the Pthumerians sealed themselves into the ruins of their civilization.

Centuries later, a group scholars found said ruins under the Village of Yharnam and traces of a substance called the Old Blood (basically a mix of bodily fluids produced by the Great Ones). To study the ruins, a guy called Master Willem founded the academy of Bygrenwerth to research and try to understand the cosmisc lore the Pthumerians left behind, but he remained highly suspisous of the Old Blood and advised against its use, preferring to gain insight instead of actively experimenting with the stuff the Old Ones left behind. His pupil Laurence however couldn't care less about Willems fears and used the Old Blood to develop Blood Ministrations with the help of The Choir (a sect within Byrgenwerth that worshipped the Old One Ebritas that lived in the ruins); essentially meaning dissolving some of the Old Blood in regular human blood or something similar and inject the stuff directly into your veins. This had the immediate effect of curing any disease whatsoever, opened access to magic and arcane secrets and made the Choir, by this point in time known as the Healing Church famous and brought them and the town of Yharnam fame and fortune.

Laurence and the Healing Church did this not out of altruism however. They hoped that the widespread use of the Old Blood would eventually elevate mankind into a higher state of being and bring them closer to the Old Ones. As it turns out, Willem was right and the abuse of the Old Blood turned out to be extremely dangerous; every time an Old One tries to procrate in a cosmic event, users of the Old Blood would turn into werewolf-like beasts. To keep the connection between Old Blood usage and the beastly affliction a secret, the Church found an answer in the proposal of the bounty hunters Gehrman and Ludwig; simply [[Rip and Tear|murder everyone who turns into a beast]]. After a series of events the majority of the population of Yharnam was transformed into beasts and the hunters themselves also succumbed to the curse. It was then that Gehrman, in a desperate attempt to still do his job, was picked up by an illusive Old One called the Moon Presence and transported to the Hunters Dream, a pocket dimension of sorts where he would send new Hunters to stop the birth of new Old Ones.

Enter the third faction of the Healing Church, the School of Mensis. The School of Mensis under the guidance of Laurences Protege Micolash, tried to create methods of communicating the Old Ones with dreams. To this end, they abducted a lot of people and did horrifying experiments on them that put the Nazis to shame, resulting in the creation of a being called the Celestial Emissary. Encouraged further by this success, they found one third of Queen Yharnams umbilical chord and used it to ressurrect the infant Old One Mergo and have an audience with him. However this failed spectacularly and they were all killed. Only Micolash survived and was trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.

The player arrives in Yharnam with an undefined disease that needs Blood Ministration to be cured; this however causes them to get trapped in Yharnam after they pass out and get transported to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman gives them gear and tells the player to go out and hunt the beasts. Eventually, this escalates into a fully fledged attempt at stopping the Old One Mergo from emerging, which would likely transform almost all humans that are still left into beasts.

The game has three possible endings: After you kill Mergo, you get back to the Hunters Dream, where Gehrman offers you to kill you in the dream. You will wake up, forget everything and go about your day, being none the wiser about the cosmic knowledge you have gained. If you refuse his offer, he will attack you. When you defeat him, his elusive master, the Moon Presence, descends from the sky and binds you to it; with you effectively replacing Gehrman and continuing its bidding. The secret ending is unlocked if you manage to find the three thirds of Yharnams Umbilical Chord and, erm.... ''consume'' them (yuck) and kill Gehrman. The Moon Presence will try to embrace you, but you resist and kill it as well. As the dust settles, you realize that you have, in fact achieved what Willem and Laurence didn't: You became an infant Old One.

The DLC The old Hunters details the events surronding the experiments the Church and the Schools of Mensis conducted as part of their efforts to create something to communicate with Ebrietas, the aftermath of the death of the Old One Kosm, who was worshipped by a fishing hamlet "Shadow over Innsmouth"-style which lead to the Church genociding through the entire village in search of insight.

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===Sekiro===
In another departure from the traditional Souls formula, Sekiro placed players in the sandals of the imaginatively named Wolf, a one-armed shinobi tasked with protecting his young (as in, literally prepubescent) lord from a variety of different enemies. Nominally set in the Sengoku period of Japan, there are plenty of mythological elements in addition to historical reproduction. The gameplay is paced very different from previous Souls games, relying on perfect timing to parry enemy blows and break their posture, rendering them more vulnerable to attack and giving you the ability to finish them off. You have fewer weapons at your disposal (technically just your sword) but a variety of tools that can all be used and upgraded as soon as you find them. You can also come back from the dead without going back to the bonfire-analogue, although usually only once, there's a light smattering of stealth elements (you are a ninja, after all), the boss fights are even tougher, and the story carries more samurai cliches than you can shake a fedora at.

==See Also==
*[[Berserk]]
*[[Fires Far Away]]
*[[Call of Cthulhu]]
*[[The Elder Scrolls]]

Tomb of Annihilation

2021-06-19T07:36:58Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Spooky Stuff */

[[File:ToA cover.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Acererak Atropal 5e.jpg|thumb|Lich feeding souls to an aborted god-fetus, nothing to see here.]]
'''Tomb of Annihilation''' is a self-contained adventure module for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]]. Set in Chult, the dinosaur-inhabited tropical jungle region of southern [[Faerun]], it is a spiritual sequel to/ remake of the [[Tomb of Horrors]] spliced with [[Dwellers of the Forbidden City]].

The plot kicks off when a strange, magical curse begins affecting everyone who has ever been resurrected from the dead, causing them to slowly weaken day by day until they die, irrevocably. The "death curse" is due to the machinations of the demi-lich [[Acererak]] (better known as the creator of the Tomb of Horrors), who has constructed a trap-riddled tomb deep in the jungles of Chult to house a necromantic artifact called the Soulmonger; this is feeding on the souls of every individual who has ever been resurrected in order to strengthen an [[atropal]] (an undead abomination that can only be described as the miscarried fetus of a god, which does not stop it from being a dangerous spellcaster in its own right), which Acererak hopes to transform into a full-fledged undead deity under his control.

The party must make a race against time to find the tomb and penetrate its traps so they can disable the machine and destroy the atropal before Acererak's plans come to fruition. While the premise makes it sound as though this is predominately a dungeon crawl, the book is set into four different stages or chapters, in which only the last is a trap-filled nightmare labyrinth. Exploration is a stronger focus, and the included maps make for an exciting romp around the continent. The adventure is also the only one of the Fifth Edition with a time limit of sorts. The quest-giver for the party is dying of the Death Curse, and if the party doesn't self-destruct the Soulmonger within 79 days, they fail the quest. Of course, they can still keep going, but they don't get a reward, and they have to settle for vengeance.

===Spooky Stuff===
SO. You might be wondering: Gee, handsome and exquisite 1d4chan grognard, what makes this book special? Simple. Aside from the awesome art, the hair-yankingly FUCK dungeon at the end, and the canon reintroduction of everybody's favorite divine abortion, this book introduces two optional rules to the 5e campaign tools: Meatgrinder Mode and Death Curse.

Meatgrinder Mode is explicitly for making character death more likely. In this mode, the players must roll a 15, not a 10, to get one pass on their death saves. That by itself is insane, but there are other things to offset it, like how all characters who survive anything that grants XP or arbitrary money in this mode earn 10% more automatically. Thus, after you hit level 2, you are less likely to take a lethal hit, since you will always be earning new hit point totals faster than the encounter CR can keep up with you (at least in official Wizards of the Coast publications), but if you do go down, you are statistically half again as likely to die.

This couples beautifully with the Death Curse. Under the Death Curse rules, all living things that had died at least once before already begin dying again. This is unblockable and insurmountable. You can still gain XP and more HP from leveling up, but nothing, not magic nor time, can allow you to recover hit points past a formula of [Total HP value - {days since Death Curse began * 1}]. Therefore, when you drop to zero, you stay alive for the usual 1d4+CON hours, then die. And thanks to the other half of the Death Curse, you are ''fucked.'' Why? Because the Death Curse blocks ALL resurrections. All of them. ''Raise Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection, Reincarnation,'' even ''Wish'' and the Deck of Many Things are all nonfunctional. The only way to not die is with ''Spare the Dying'' and ''Revivify,'' since the soul doesn't leave the body before the time limits on those spells.

So what's the dealie, yo? Well, remember that atropal? Yeah, Acererak commissioned a soul-injecting necrowomb from some hags, and they thought it was hilarious, so they built it for him. He plugged it into the atropal, and it's eating hundreds of thousands of souls from across the Realmspace Sphere (including the sun and Glyth) as nourishment. Which is [[awesome]], but also [[Grimdark|very bad]]. When it hits critical mass, at which point it will have consumed millions of souls, Acererak hopes it will erupt into a neonate god, one he can control, which will begin ripping the souls from every living thing on Toril and give him a cut. Now, whether that would work or not, nobody knows, least of all Acererak, who can always nip out to his pocket dimension if it doesn't work. He's not from Toril, he doesn't give a fuck. One wonders what Larloch and Szass Tam think of all this, and one would learn that they are ''fucking angry.'' Both have sent their dudes to fuck things up, and you can even take Larloch as a patron of your Warlock if you want to play one of his agents sent to destroy the fucking thing.

So what happens next? Canonically, the party finds the trickster gods (actually just trickster spirits) that Acererak wrecked so he could turn their temple into his new Tomb of Annihilation, gets all kinds of juiced up by them, and blows up the adamantine support struts holding the Soulmonger above the lava pit beneath it, then double-aborts the atropal and kills the current body of the lich. He doesn't like that, but not knowing how they're so powerful since he didn't know the trickster gods were still extant, he just reforms his body elsewhere and plots to murder the party's children. He's eternal, he has time for that.

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Modules]]
[[Category:Forgotten Realms]]

Cambion

2021-06-19T07:07:31Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: I thought it was a woman...

[[File:Cambion.jpg|300px|thumb|right|A 5e Cambion practicing their Kubrick Stare.]]
The '''Cambion''' is a [[Dungeons & Dragons]] monster with a long history to it, having appeared in the Monster Manual II for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 1st edition all the way back in 1983.

In a nut-shell, the cambion is a "half-[[demon]]", the result of a union between a tanar'ri and a mortal creature. They have a rather convoluted relationship with the [[succubus]], and their lore has changed through the different editions as a result. The basic idea, though, remains the same: these guys are the product of a direct union of mortal and fiend, and are the direct progenitors of the more famous [[tiefling]]s.

In AD&D, both in their 1e appearance and in their 2e appearance (the Mostrous Compendium Appendixes for the Outer Planes and [[Planescape]]), cambions are an all-male species of half-fiend born when a male tanar'ri mates with a humanoid female. They're divided into two different castes; the weaker "Major" Cambion descends from a lesser or greater tanar'ri, whilst the more powerful "Baron" or "Marquis" Cambions descend from true tanari'ri. The difference is most keenly felt in terms of mental stats; Barons have much higher Wisdom and Charisma ranges than Majors do (13-18 and 2-24 vs. 5-8 and 1-6, respectively), although they can reach higher peaks in everything than the Majors.

All cambions have potent [[rogue]] abilities - 95% chance to climb walls, 80% chance to hide in shadows, 80% chance to move silently, '''and''' can do all of that in bulky metal armor without penalty. Add in that they can't be surprised, their natural combat skills, the fact they always have one of four spell-like abilities (detect magic or inflict fear by touch, levitate 7/day, polymorph self 3/day), the most intelligent have [[wizard]] spells and the most charming Baron Cambions can cast ''Charm Person'' at-will, and they're a pretty nasty lot.

It goes without saying that cambions are valued as [[assassin]]s in the [[Blood War]].

The female "counterpart" to the cambion is the [[Alu-Fiend]], which is the half-mortal daughter of a [[succubus]]. If that makes you sit up and go "wait a minute", congrats. Ironically, despite the stereotype of "the hot monster chick is redeemable, the ugly monster dude isn't", cambions are the only one of the two with a chance to be Chaotic Good, although both can potentially be Chaotic Neutral. In fact, roughly 1 in 10 Cambion are not Chaotic Evil, which is pretty high odds all things considered.

In 3rd edition, cambions didn't appear for the longest time. With the new Half-Fiend racial template, they really didn't serve much of a point anymore, since their whole lore was tied up in "half-demon". Eventually, though, they did rear their head in 2007's ''Expedition to the Demonweb Pits'', where they were presented as both a monster and, ironically, a PC class.

The 3e cambion is presented as being the result of a mating between a tanar'ri father and a [[planetouched]] mother, typically a tiefling. This mixing of fiend, mortal and extraplanar blood produces something very different to the standard half-fiend. Though the term "major cambion" was no longer used, there's still a divergence between common and greater cambions - the latter are born from [[Demon Prince]]s or other powerful "noble" demons mating with female half-fiends. Another major change is that cambions are no longer an all-male race, an aspect that would follow onwards into future editions. They do still retain their traditional appearance of sharply pointed ears, fangs, and skin covered in pockmarked, pitch-black scales.

Regardless, cambions in 3e are described as being disdained and discarded even by their tanar'ri progenitors, often turning to a role as extraplanar Abyssal agents to survive.

4th edition presented an even bigger change to the cambion lore. Because demons and devils were redefined as "elemental embodiments of ruination" and "fallen angels" respectively, rather than just different flavors of Evil Outsider, the classic list of fiends was shuffled around. One result of this was that the [[succubus]] became a devil. The other result was that cambions lost their half-demon roots and instead became half-devils. Looking like winged 4e [[tiefling]]s, the 4e cambions were bred by devils as minions, created to serve specific goals and purposes. Incidentally, by this point, they finally lost the long-standing tradition of always being born to fiendish fathers with mortal mothers, which frankly makes a lot of sense.

In 5th edition, the cambion changed yet again. As 5e has lost the half-fiend template, the cambion has now taken its place as the true half-fiend, now being the result of any union between mortal and fiend. That led to it appearing in the very first Monster Manual for that edition. Much like the [[gnolls]], cambions got a lot more malevolent in 5e; having originally been stated that 1 in 10 cambions were Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good back in 2e, they're now described as universally evil to the core (ironic given the treatment [[tieflings]] received this edition). 5e cambions mostly commonly trace their lineage to either a [[succubus]]/[[incubus]] or to [[Graz'zt]], which makes sense given that these are the fiends most known in D&D lore for being horny bastards.

==3.5 Cambion PC Stats==
[[File:Cambion 3e.png|left|thumb]]
::Ability Score Modifier (Common): +5 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +3 Constitution, -4 Wisdom (minimum 3), -10 Charisma (minimum 2); if Charisma penalty would drop Charisma below 2, then the remaining penalty is applied to Intelligence (minimum 3) instead.
::Ability Score Modifier (Greater): +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +4 Intelligence, +10 Wisdom, +10 Charisma
::Medium
::Outsider
::Base land speed 40 feet
::Darkvision 60 feet
::6 levels in Outsider, which provides 6d8 Hit Dice, BAB +6, Fort +5, Ref +5, Will +5.
::Racial Skills: 8 * (2 + Int modifier) skill points, class skills are Climb, Gather Information, Hide Knowledge (Local), Listen, Move Silently, Sense Motive, Spot, Tumble.
::Racial Feats: 3 bonus feats
::Natural Armor Bonus: +2
::Spell-like Ability: Charm Person with caster level equalling Hit Dice at-will, Greater Cambions only.
::Aligned Strike: A cambion's natural weapons and any weapon it wields are treated as being both Chaotic Aligned and Evil Aligned for overcoming damage reduction.
::Alternate Form (Su): A cambion can assume the form of a single, specific Medium humanoid as a standard action once per day. This functions as a Polymorph spell (caster level 6), except it does not provide any healing. A cambion can remain in its alternate form until it chooses to return to its natural form.
::Silent Metal (Ex): A cambion has no armor check penalty on Hide and Move Silently checks.
::Favored Class: [[Assassin]]
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +4 for Common Cambions, +5 for Greater Cambions

Now, if you're at all familiar with how 3.5 races should work, you've no doubt realized what an absolute '''fucking mess''' this racial profile is. Insanely overpowered in some spots and equally insanely weak in some, having a [[prestige class]] as a favored class, odd numbered ability score modifiers, and all in all it's a freaking mess. It's so bad that the writer, Wolfgang Baur, actually apologized for it on Enworld, admitting that perhaps it wasn't really worth differentiating it from the standard half-fiend, and that between being a rush-job that no editor fixed up and trying to adhere too closely to the cambion's 2e mechanics, it ended up as the piece of junk you see now.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Cambion 1e.jpg|1e
Cambion 2e.png|2e
Cambion 4e.jpg|4e
</gallery>

{{D&D-Outsiders}} [[Category:Mixed Races]]

Demiplane of Dread

2021-06-19T04:29:31Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* The Carnival 5e */

{{NeedsImages}}
'''The Demiplane of Dread''' is a unique [[Demiplane]] - or, perhaps more accurately, a series of interlinked demiplanes - within the [[Great Wheel]] cosmology of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. This is the actual "world" in which the campaign setting of [[Ravenloft]] is based, and so the name is often used when trying to describe the "Ravenloft world".

The precise origins of the Demiplane of Dread are lost to history. Its creators are enigmatic beings known only as "The Dark Powers", who maintain and defend their creation with mighty magic and jealous zeal. It's believed they have some kind of mutual non-aggression pact with the various gods of the Great Wheel, but nothing canon is ever defined. It is believed to lie where the [[Ethereal Plane]] meets the [[Plane of Shadow]], but is able to manifest portals absolutely ''everywhere'', even in places normally restricted to planar portals, such as [[Dark Sun|Athas]] or the [[Phlogiston]]. Such portals usually appear as banks of fog or mist, but will adapt themselves to other sight-obscuring phenomena - and are usually one-way. Getting ''in'' is easy, but getting '''out'''? Canonically you won't be able to leave unless the Dark Powers will it, short of using artifact-level items like the dreaded Rift Spanner which just so happens to be the kind of item that could turn you into a [[Darklord]] just from getting it to work properly.

Aaand then came 3.5 which opened a doorway into the [[World Serpent Inn]], breaking the whole point of this prison plane. Here it's a failsafe for DMs when their parties reach their 16th birthday and are sick of Goth. Its doorway on the Demiplane's side of things changes every night. Mind you, even back in AD&D, portals '''out''' of the Demiplane of Dread were explicitly a thing and even listed in major [[splatbook]]s like the Domains of Dread - for example, the Isle of Lament in Lamordia houses one such portal, so you can leave just by going there, if you can sneak past Adam.

==Planar Traits==
The Demiplane of Dread's creators have molded the reality of this world into a new fashion, forcibly imposing the rules of [[Gothic Horror]] on the setting. There are many ways that this molding manifests, but some of the more overt include the following:
* [[Necromancer|Necromancy]] spells are empowered and rendered more dangerous; spells like Animate Dead will call up more creatures than the caster may be able to control, whilst spells that instantly kill their victims usually cause such victims to arise spontaneously as the [[undead]] - and often as ones quite pissed off at their killer. Certain non-necromancy, non-instant-kill spells even have a chance of doing this, such as Disintegrate turning a completely disintegrated victim into an incorporeal undead! Using any necromancy spell provokes a powers check unless it's purely defensive, doesn't affect undead, and doesn't manipulate life force; that list of "safe" spells is quite narrow.
* [[Diviner|Divination]] spells are pretty much worthless; spells that detect moral alignment invariably fail, spells aimed at detecting monstrous species either are unreliable (Detect Undead) or flatly won't work (using True Seeing to look for natural shapechangers), spells that revolve around mental contact risk driving you mad if you accidentally use them on certain inhuman creatures, and in general you can't trust the result of divination spells because the normal awareness of when such a spell has failed doesn't occur in the Demiplane of Dread. Oh, and Scrying type spells create a visible sensory apparatus that can alert your target that you're scrying on them, which can even serve as a conduit for things like gaze attacks. There's a practical reason for this; horrific things aren't quite as scary if you know their true nature too early, and so this element was put in to keep from having the DM tip their hands too soon and ruin the scare.
* [[Conjurer|Conjuration]] allows entities from other planes to be summoned, but they won't be able to return home when the spell expires. Obviously, quite a few of them will be ''very'' upset with their summoner because of this. Even before they figure this out, the binding aspects of conjuration spells are weaker in the Demiplane of Dread, giving summoned creatures a chance to escape its bonds the moment it arrives.
* [[Abjurer|Abjuration]] spells that banish creatures to another plane do not work. Rather, they ''appear'' to work but just toss the target somewhere else within the demiplane.
* [[Illusionist|Illusion]] spells that manipulate shadows are 20% more powerful, but the caster risks losing control of it when the spell ends, releasing a free-willed [[shadow]].
* Spells that directly interfere with the fabric of a Domain, such as manipulating weather, can often attract the attention of the resident [[Darklord]], and who might be able to subvert or negate these same spells if they have related powers.
* Teleportation spells are restricted; each domain is treated like its own separate plane of existence. High-level teleportation spells can overcome this if the border is not closed. Nothing can teleport out of a closed domain or the Demiplane entirely.
* Curses are empowered, and even non-spellcasters can potentially lay deadly or deforming curses on people if their rage or grief is intense enough to catch the notice of the [[Dark Powers]].
* The [[Dark Powers]] are watching everybody and seem to enjoy turning people into monsters that reflect their own evil deeds. When a creature performs some evil act, which range from casting necromantic spells to premeditated murder, the Dark Powers [[Powers Check|might notice]] and start the process. The changes are subtle or even helpful at first, allowing the victim to more easily perform his evil acts, which lures the victim into more evil, gaining more attention and transformation, until he is completely transformed into a monster or even a [[darklord]] of his own domain.
* Intelligent undead, like vampires, can tell if their minds are being read and can choose which thoughts they will project. Depending on the circumstances, this may be a false image passing them off as human or an up-close look at the most evil parts of their minds meant to drive the would-be mind reader insane.
* 5th edition's overhaul of the lore drops most of the above rules but adds some new ones. If you die in the Demiplane of Dread your soul does not move into the afterlife and is trapped there until it is eventually reincarnated. People who are resurrected after being dead for over 24 hour discover this and are traumatized by the experience.
* Also in 5th edition, Darklords can sense when somebody in their domain is trying to cast spells that contact beings on other planes and can make themselves the target of the spell.

==Mapping the Demiplane==
Geo-physically, the Demiplane of Dread consists of various bubbles of reality, ranging in size from a single room to full-fledged countries, all floating in a sea of ephemeral mist; each of these reality bubbles (called "Domains") is typically centered around a [[Darklord]], a villain whose evil caught the eyes of the Dark Powers and so they responded by imprisoning them within the Demiplane. 3rd edition's unpublished [[splatbook]] "[[Van Richten's Guide]] to the Mists" introduced the concept of ''Oubliettes'', which are basically prototype or abandoned Domains that don't contain a Darklord. A Domain may exist on its own (an "Island of Terror") or be physically coterminous with one or more more other domains, forming what is called a "Cluster". The largest and oldest Cluster in the Demiplane is called "The Core", and this is basically Ground Zero for the setting.

Traveling between Domains is a little tricky to describe. If two Domains are coterminous, you can simply walk between them, as if they were normal lands. If you want to get to a Domain that ''isn't'' coterminous, then you have to just walk into the Mists and hope you'll end up where you want to go. Certain spots are known to have what are essentially portals that can link different Domains together, in that traveling from these spots (which may require unique triggers before they kick in) will usually end you up in a specific Domain; known as "Mistways", these portals can be either one way or two way, and vary in reliability (aka, how likely you are to end up at the intended destination instead of fuck-knows-where) from "guaranteed" to "you rolls the dice, you takes your chances".

Traveling between Domains is made more complicated by the fact that most [[Darklord]]s have a power called "Closing the Borders," which causes the borders of their Domain to become enveloped in a barrier of some sort unique to that Darklord that prevents escape in some fashion - some are non-lethal, most will kill you if you try. A rare few can be circumvented by the right esoteric circumstances (for example, [[undead]] or [[construct]]s can safely walk through poisonous borders like that of Barovia, because they're fundamentally immune to poison), but in general this is the ultimate [[Railroading]] tool the DM has to keep you from just saying "fuck this" and leaving the domain.

Precisely why the Dark Powers collect these [[Darklord]]s is unknown, and theories abound; the Demiplane of Dread has been described as a prison, a gathering place for evil, a grand study into the nature of evil, a unique kind of Hell, or even a Purgatory by various fans.

Another great mystery is the nature of its native population. Some Domains were physically taken from their homeworlds, but most are described as "copies" rather than direct abductions of land. This then leaves players wondering: are the locals actually "real", or are they merely soulless simulacra - props in the grand theater of Gothic Horror tales that the Dark Powers are conducting? Nothing concrete has ever been given. This isn't entirely consistent however, with other originals becoming ruins (Like Kalidnay) or vanishing entirely (like Har’Akir).

===The Core===
As mentioned above, this is the "core" of Ravenloft, the sole normal-style continent where the bulk of the game focuses on. Think of it as something akin to the Sword Coast of the [[Forgotten Realms]], or Ansalon in [[Dragonlance]]. The precise layout has changed over Ravenloft's life, usually as a result of [[Advancing the Storyline]] - most prominently, it changed massively after the [[Grand Conjunction]], and then changed a little during both the [[Grim Harvest]] and the shift from 2e to 3e.

The Core is made up of the following Domains.

=====Barovia=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Blatant Dracula Knockoff
::[[Darklord]]: [[Strahd von Zarovich]]

This is the oldest domain in Ravenloft, the literal heart of the Demiplane of Dread. It's ruled by Strahd, and is basically Dracula in D&D. It is also home to the titular [[Castle Ravenloft]], Strahd's humble abode. This domain has been visited in literally ''every single edition'' of D&D after BECMI; even 4th edition, the only edition without an adaptation of I6 to its titles, has the adventure "Fair Barovia" in [[Dungeon Magazine]] #207, which has the party exploring Barovia and completing assorted side-quests.

=====Borca=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Poisoners, Italy under the Borgia Family
::[[Darklord]]: Ivana Boritsi

Originally, Borca was ruled by the Darklord Camille Boritsi, and was half its present size, sharing borders with the near-identical domain of Dorvini. Ivana poisoned her mother because her mom seduced her boyfriend, and during the Grand Conjunction, her domain and that of her cousin Ivan Dilisnya merged together due to their great similarities.

=====Darkon=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Age to Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills, Plains, Mountains & Swamps
::Motif: Generic [[Dark Fantasy]]
::[[Darklord]]: Azalin

Darkon is notable as the most overtly fantastical realm in the Demiplane of Dread, with a relatively huge population of [[demihuman]]s that sees humans going from the usual 90+% population merit to only 75% as well as the greatest amount of local toleration for arcane magic.

If one spends a month in the realm they lose their memories until they leave the domain, thinking they've always been from Darkon. Unfortunately, the new state from having lost memories convinces one to never leave unless forced to.

=====Dementlieu=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Plains
::Motif: Renaissance France/Victorian England
::[[Darklord]]: Dominic D'Honaire

Though not as overtly modeled on London as the domain of Paridon, Dementlieu definitely taps into the Gothic Urban Horror motif, as is made clear by the way it is home to myriad mystical mind-manipulators and the character Alanik Ray, who is basically Sherlock Holmes if he was an [[elf]]. It's considered the "cultural heart" of the Core.

=====Falkovnia=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Plains
::Motif: Military Horror, Fascism, Urban Squalor
::[[Darklord]]: Vlad Drakov

Slap together Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, paint it up in the most shit-awful and miserable stereotypes of Dark Ages Europe, and have the place be run by a man who melds Hitler with Vlad the Impaler and is so bloodthirsty they'd both be disgusted by him. Falkovnia is outright called the biggest shithole in the Demiplane of Dread.

=====Forlorn=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Dreary Scotland with a dash of Brak Man Morn
::[[Darklord]]: Tristen ApBlanc

A vaguely Scottish Celtic themed domain that nobody gives a shit about because there's nothing in it but killer plants, giant bugs, and [[goblyn]]s. 3e tried to fix this by adding a small population of native humans, but the overall domain is still a monster-infested backwoods, so nobody fucking cares. As for its resident asshole, ApBlanc is a [[vampyre]] by day, and a ghost by night, proving once and for all that the Dark Powers do, indeed, have a sense of humor.

=====Hazlan=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Hills, Mountains & Plains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy meets Yellow Peril
::[[Darklord]]: Hazlik

Essentially a tiny sliver of [[Thay]] transplanted into the Demiplane of Dread, where a tiny minutia (the Mulan ethnicity) rules over and brutally represses a far vaster majority (the Rashemani). One of only two places so absolutely shit that [[The Lawgiver]] is actually worshipped here.

=====Invidia=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Lethally Impulsive Stupidity
::[[Darklord]]: Gabrielle Aderre

A land of passionate, hot-blooded and constantly feuding individuals, including mercenary armies, ogres, giants, and wolfweres. The [[Vistani]] are executed on sight here, and as such, its hunter-mercenaries are on the collective shit-list of both Strahd von Zerovich and Ivan Dilisnya.

=====Kartakass=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
::[[Darklord]]: Meistersinger Harkon Lukas

A rural backwoods inhabited by proud, cocky, music-loving foresters who are quite happy with the way things are, thank you. They are totally oblivious to the population of [[wolfwere]]s hiding amongst them.

=====Keening=====
::Cultural Level: None (formerly Chivalric)
::Landscape: Temperate Mountains (Bleached of Life)
::Motif: Endless Grief
::[[Darklord]]: Tristessa the Banshee

A cursed and forsaken realm, with a population consisting solely of its mad, grief-stricken [[banshee]] [[darklord]], her court of half-insane [[undead]] [[fey]], and a village of [[skeleton]]s that constantly mime out the actions of their last day.

=====Lamordia=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Mad Science ala Frankenstein
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Mordenheim & Adam

A stuffy, tempest-lashed domain that prides itself on its scientific acumen and its staunch rationalistic beliefs, totally denying the fantastical nature of the world around them.

=====Mordent=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Plains & Swamps
::Motif: Ghost-Haunted Rural Britain/Scotland
::[[Darklord]]: Lord Wilfred Godefroy

It's basically the setting for every ghost-related Gothic Horror novel ever written. High concentration of both incorporeal undead and mist creatures in a land dotted by small villages sheltering the living. Is also full of ancient ruined manors, decaying coats of arms and dying or dead noble families, furthering that neo-Britain impression by casting it as the decaying remnants of a once-mighty civilization. The false history implies they share a mutual background with Borca, perhaps having originated from the same nameless fantasy world.

=====Necropolis=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Temperate Settled Area
::Motif: City of the Dead
::[[Darklord]]: Death

Once a bustling metropolis in Darkon called Il Aluk, the place was destroyed and turned into a city of sapient undead creatures protected behind a mystical veil that kills and reanimates any living humanoids that enter. This was caused by Azalin achieving an epic-level fuck up with his magic. Generally considered the worst domain in the Core because you can't go in there without being transformed into an [[undead]], which in AD&D came with associated rules that, in the grand tradition of [[Ravenloft]], utterly fucked you over pretty much from the get-go. Its Darklord, "Death", is an uber-powerful ghost with hyper-lethal abilities that was created from a clone of Azalin and which has gone absolutely insane, believing itself to be the literal spirit of death.

=====Nova Vaasa=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Russia under Peter the Great
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken

A horse-filled steppeland dominated by sweeping grassy plains and crushing urban poverty and squalor, presided over by a mixture of corrupt aristocrats and Lawful Good types who view "law" as more important than "good". This is the ''other'' domain shitty enough to have [[The Lawgiver]] as the state religion, and is such a hellhole that ''Barovians'' look down on its people as backward hicks.

=====Richemulot=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Wererat Land
::[[Darklord]]: Jacqueline Renier

A pseudo-French domain distinguished mostly by being the largest breeding ground of [[wererat]]s in the entire demiplane. The name is literally French for "Rich Mouse", which pretty much gives the game away from the start if you know the language..

=====The Shadow Rift=====
::Cultural Level: Unknowable
::Landscape: Eternally Dark Mysical
::Motif: Dark Faerie Tales
::[[Darklord]]: Gwydion the Shadow Fiend

This is the homeland of the [[Shadow Fey]], and as such no mortals know anything about the place. The court is found at the bottom of a chasm filled with mist, protecting it from the sun, as well as erasing anything stupid enough to try penetrating so deeply into said-mist. In classic Faerie fashion, time works differently here, with a fortnight outside equaling a year ''inside.''

=====Sithicus=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Declining [[Elf]] Kingdom
::[[Darklord]]: Inza Kulchevitch

The only domain in the Core that has a [[demihuman]] majority population, this was formerly the domain of [[Lord Soth]], and is thus loosely based on the [[Dragonlance]] setting. May or may not contain vampire [[kender]].

=====Tepest=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Grim Faerie Tales Europe meets Salem Witch Trials
::[[Darklord]]: The Sisters Mindefisk

Hands down one of the most primitive and worthless backwaters in the Core, Tepest's trio of [[hag]] [[darklord]]s are practically non-entities in their own land, with the focus instead being on how the ignorant superstitious peasantry are falling increasingly under the sway of a self-righteous inquisition of self-proclaimed [[fey]]-hunters and [[witch]]-burners. The sisters ''do'' fan the flames of said-group so they can harvest the bodies of anyone condemned, but mostly stick to hiding in their cottage.

=====Valachan=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: African Savages
::[[Darklord]]: Baron Urik von Kharkov (replaced by Chakuna in 5e)

A rugged wilderness inhabited by dusky-skinned foresters who take pride in their absolute ignorance when it comes to book-learning or anything not related to the practicalities of forest-work, to the point they even look down upon their own priests. Befittingly, this leaves them too ignorant to realize they are being eaten alive by a hidden population of [[nosferatu]] and [[werepanther]]s.

=====Verbrek=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Swamps
::Motif: Werewolf Country
::[[Darklord]]: Alfred Timothy

The obligatory [[werewolf]] domain, to contrast the Dracula and Frankenstein ones. Everybody here knows the wilderness (as embodied by the werewolves) is at their door, and live accordingly. This domain was originally called '''Arkandale''' and was run by Alfred's father, Nathan, until he lost the Dark Powers' interest by actually making peace with his lot in life and coming to enjoy being a riverboating casino owner, even if it did mean no longer being able to hunt on the land.

[[Quoth the Raven]] #1 offers an alternative take on the domain where Nathan reclaims it after Alfred's werewolf supremacist cult causes a deadly famine and then civil war amongst the local lycanthropes, which leads to it being renamed Arkandale once more.

===The Seas===
The Core is surrounded by two seas; the Nocturnal Sea and the Sea of Sorrows, which are technically their own unique Clusters that just so happen to adjoin the Core. Because of this, they're put in their own specific sections.

====The Sea of Sorrows====
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Pieter van Riese

This is the Western Sea of the Core, a cold, stormy, mist- (and Mist-)haunted expanse of water populated by various islands, representing the scattered domains of lesser Darklords. Its own "true" Darklord is Captain Pieter van Riese; a [[ghost]] based on the legendary Flying Dutchman who has perhaps the greatest freedom of any Darklord in Ravenloft - he can even leave his ship to go on land and enter other domains! This is because his curse is to ''never'' be able to find his own way, but instead to only be able to take others to where they want to go.

=====Carcharodon Isle=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Hills
::Motif: <s>Ladyhawke</s> Parted Lovers
::[[Darklord]]: Alison Marjory and Sean Mako

An island cursed with two darklords; a fisherman turned [[wereshark]] and a [[merfolk|mermaid]]-turned-human turned [[seawolf]], whose curses prevent them from ever meeting in their human forms. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====Markovia=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Warm Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: The Island of Dr. Moreau
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Markov

It's literally just the Island of Dr Moreau in D&D. That's it. Originally part of the Core, but was moved out to the Sea of Sorrows as a result of the [[Grand Conjunction]]. Nothing here except the [[Darklord]], his [[Broken One]] minions, and a small temple of priests dedicated to guarding a powerful evil artifact that would be of great interest to the Darklord.

=====Blaustein=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Bluebeard

A small island consisting of a castle and a single village, whose population are fanatically loyal to the blue-bearded master of the castle above.

=====Demise=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Althea

A rocky island made from a mostly cooled volcano, this is basically a glorified dungeon that serves as the prison of the [[medusa]] Althea. Fans have tried to expand this by adding the ghost of her murdered [[maedar]] husband (arguably a much better candidate for the darklord) and her maedar son, who hates both of his crazy parents and wants off this godsforsaken rock.

=====Dominia=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Insanity and Institutional Abuse
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth

A small island that houses the most famous (if not only) insane asylum in all of the Core. A pity it's actually a nest of cerebral vampires, ruled over a crazed psychiatrist determined to push the studies of inflicting madness and terror to their absolute limit.

=====Ghastria=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Stezen D'Polarno

A surprisingly grim and colorless place which grows abundant food that, mysteriously, holds no taste when consumed.

====The Nocturnal Sea====
::[[Darklord]]: Meredoth

The cold and dismal Eastern Sea of the Core, which only emerged from the Mists after the events of the [[Grand Conjunction]], ruled over by Meredoth, an epic-level [[Necromancer]] from Glantri in [[Mystara]]. Although strongly associated with ''Graben Island'', which is where "his" people live, Meredoth can actually travel the Sea at will, and in fact lairs himself on the wintery isle of ''Todstein''. Like the Sea of Sorrows, there are plenty of other domains scattered around the Nocturnal Sea ruled over by their own lords.

=====Isle of the Ravens=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: The Lady of Ravens

A deserted island home only to its darklord, an insane but powerful sorceress from a [[Gormentghast]]ian family, and her legions of raven and [[fey]] servants. Whilst it was first mentioned in official media, appearing in brief summary in the writeup of the Nocturnal Sea in the Domains of Dread revised campaign setting, it was fans who fleshed it out; the Isle of the Ravens first received a writeup in the [[Books of S|Book of Sacrifices]], before later being revisited in [[Quoth the Raven]] #13.

=====L'ile de la Tempete=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Alain Monette

A rocky and treacherous island whose lighthouse serves only to lure sailors to their doom upon its shores.

=====Liffe=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Baron Evensong or Assorted Demilords

A surprisingly large and fertile island, with one of the biggest and most welcoming populations of any island-domains in the Nocturnal Sea. Originally ruled by Baron Evensong, although the fanmade Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer downgraded him to one of a cluster of different super-minor darklords.

=====Locknar Cove=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Cold, eroded hills and thick, old growth forest
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

A quiet, humble island of fisherfolk that lies off the combined shorelines of Darkon and Nova Vassa, close to the isle of Liffe. Hidden at its core like a toad in a stone, the ghost of an avaricious pirate who valued wealth beyond his own life guards a vast treasure hoard. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

===The Clusters===
====The Amber Wastes====
::Motif: Dark Fantasy [[Egypt]]

It's Gothic Horror Egypt in D&D. What more is there to say? Its constituent domains are ''Har'Akir'', ''Sebua'', and ''Pharazia''.

=====Har'Akir=====
::Cultural Level: Bronze Age
::Landscape: Desert and Badlands
::Motif: Mummy Horror Movies
::[[Darklord]]: Anhtepot

''Har'Akir'' is a tiny little village of Egyptian peasants who live next to a tomb housing the [[darklord]] Ankhtepot, a pharaoh who blasphemed against the gods and was condemned to both eternity as a [[mummy]] and to be trapped in obscurity with only a single village of humble peasants to "lord over".

=====Sebua=====
::Cultural Level: Bronze Age Darklord, Stone Age natives
::Landscape: Desert Wasteland
::Motif: Mummy Horror meets Ghost Horror
::[[Darklord]]: Tiyet

''Sebua'' consists of an abandoned Egyptian manor next to an oasis haunted by both a tribe of feral children, who inhabit the nearby ruins of a fallen city, and the [[darklord]] Tiyet, a unique female [[mummy]] who appears as a gorgeous woman... save for her insatiable hunger for human hearts.

=====Pharazia=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape: Deserts, Oases, Rivers
::Motif: Arabian Nights Horror meets Religious Fundamentalism
::[[Darklord]]: Diamabel
''Pharazia'' is a pseudo-Arabian city-state ruled over by its [[darklord]] Diamabel; a moralistic fanatic who led a campaign of genocidal terror in life, when felled by an arrow he arose as the shining [[angel]] he always wanted to become... only to find he transformed into a hideous [[undead]] version of himself at night.

====The Burning Peaks====
::Motif: [[Dark Fantasy]]

A two-domain cluster made up of ''Cavitus'', the realm of [[Vecna]], and ''Tovag'', the realm of [[Kas]].

=====Cavitus=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Negative Energy-Infused Wasteland
::Motif: Cartoonish [[Necromancer]]-Ruled Hellhole
::[[Darklord]]: [[Vecna]]

=====Tovag=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Mountains, Scrub Pine Forests
::Motif: [[Vampire]]s, War Horror
::[[Darklord]]: [[Kas]]

====The Frozen Reaches====
::Motif: Dark Fantasy Russia

It's basically the frozen wintery hell that everybody imagines that Russia is transplanted into D&D. Its constituent domains are ''Sanguinia'' and ''Vorostokov'',

=====Sanguina=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Prince Ladislav Mircea

Sanguina is an Early Medieval Russian kingdom ruled over by Prince Ladislav Mircea, a self-centered [[alchemist]] who accidentally transformed himself into a [[mutant]] [[vampire]], possibly a [[Vrykolaka]], that feeds on the Four Humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile) in an effort to save himself from a deadly plague.

=====Vorostokov=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Boyar Gregor Zolnik

Vorostokov is a frigid Dark Ages wasteland of villages and forests trapped in a perpetual winter, ruled over by the [[Loup du Noir]] Boyar Gregor Zolnik.

====The Shadowlands====
::Motif: Medieval Dark Fantasy

Intimately tied to a single world, the Shadowlands are made up of three domains that all tie to one long story of corruption; ''Avonleigh'', ''Nidala'', and ''Shadowborn Manor''.

=====Avonleigh=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Morgoroth the Black

Avonleigh is a monster-haunted forest ruled over by the [[darklord]] Morgoroth the Black, a [[planeswalker]] [[wizard]] who traveled to the homeland of the three domains and ended up destroying the not!Arthurian court there through accident. He is now trapped as a ephemeral shade unless the enchanted mirror that trapped him in this state is reassembled in his former mansion home.

=====Shadowborn Manor=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Ebonbane

Shadowborn Manor is a manor other than Morgoroth's that is the resting place of Ebonbane, a raging fiend trapped in a sword, which is itself trapped in a crystal sarcophagus. Ebonbane is so dangerous that Morgoroth actually uses his magic to assist in keeping the damn thing locked up.

=====Nidala=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Elena Faith-Hold

Nidala is the only actually populated domain, and is ruled over by the self-righteous fanatical fallen [[paladin]] Elena Faith-Hold.

====The Verduous Lands====
::Motif: Tropical Dark Fantasy

The hot and humid hellholes, full of deadly predators and equally deadly plants. For some reason the moon is never seen here.

=====Saragoss=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Draga Saltbiter

Saragoss is an oceanic domain; a vast entangling sargassum patch full of wrecked ships crawling with [[ghoul]]s and cannibal [[pirate]]s above and [[sahuagin]] and [[shark]]s below, with a self-loathing [[wereshark]] [[pirate]] and [[cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] for a [[darklord]].

=====The Wildlands=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape: Tropical Jungles and Swamps
::Motif: Twisted Animal Fables
::[[Darklord]]: King Crocodile

The Wildlands are basically [[grimdark]] Jungle Book; a tropical jungle full of asshole talking animals ruled over by the monstrous King Crocodile.

=====Sri Raji=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Rain forests, hills, and mountains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy India / Sri Lanka
::[[Darklord]]: Maharaja Arijani

''Formerly'' an Island of Terror, Sri Raji is a domain in the Verduous Lands cluster ruled by the [[Rakshasa]] Maharaja Arijani. The Verduous Lands cluster does not have a moon with potentially interesting consequences for lycanthropes having some part of the lunar cycle as their trigger condition. Equally, there should be no tides. Most of the human inhabitants of Sri Raji congregate in three cities, each located surprisingly close to the domain border. A fourth city, Mahakala, is less populated and commonly referred to as "accursed". It's basically Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but with more [[rakshasa]]s, [[beastfolk]] and giant insects.

====Zherisia====
::Motif: Urban Dark Fantasy

Differentiating itself from other clusters, Zherisia is composed of the city domain of ''Paridon'' and ''Timor'', a former Island of Terror now transformed into the sewers underneath Paridon.

=====Paridon=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Urban
::Motif: Gothic-Era Urban Horror
::[[Darklord]]:Sodo

Paridon is a sprawling London-esque city infested with a uniquely powerful strain of [[doppelganger]]s, whose [[darklord]] is a many-cursed psychotic doppelganger named Sodo.

=====Timor=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Underground Tunnels
::Motif: Monsters From Below
::[[Darklord]]: The Marikith Queen

Timor is a dripping hive of tunnels infested by xenomorph expies called Marikith.

====Republica de Neuva Aragona====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Tropical Jungle Islands

A two-domain cluster made up of neighboring isles in a tropical ocean known to its inhabitants as Mar de Lagrimas (the Sea of Tears), both themed after the Spanish colonies of South America. Unusually, the two domains are historically linked; both were connected to the same history involving the "native" colonists rising up against the rule of the motherland of Aragona and fighting for their indepence, which led to the two primary land-masses - the island of '''Resistencia''' and the mainland of '''Maconda''' each gaining a [[Darklord]] out of that initial struggle. It appears in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Resistencia=====
Resistencia is haunted by the [[ghost]] of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez, the leader of the failed army sent by the motherland to quash the independence revolution.

=====Maconda=====
Maconda, on the other hand, is led openly and in darkness by the man who led the independence revolution: the [[wereananconda]] President-General Martin Jose Maconda.

====Colonies of the Holy Empire====
An unusual [[netbook]] cluster in that it's not technically presented ''as'' a cluster. The Colonies of the Holy Empire are a collective of domains that all draw from the same homeworld, a pastiche of Central/South America and its invasion by the Spanish Conquistadors, which appeared in the [[Books of S]] [[netbook]]s. Despite this shared origin, they are not presented as being geographically linked in the usual way of a cluster. ''Mictlan'' appeared in the Book of Shadows, whilst ''Igid Rabi-i'' and ''Cumbre de Oro'' both appeared in the Book of Sacrifices.

=====Mictlan=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Tropical Jungle
::[[Darklord]]: Commander Hernando Mouriros

A pastiche of the [[Aztec]] empire, the invasion of an army from a mysterious Chivalric realm has destabilize the realm and caused it to begin falling apart into civil war. And all the while, the invaders, cursed to never die unless they can conquer all of Mictlan, press on desperately in an attempt to end their long and bloody campaign.

=====Igid Rabi-i=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric, Classical or Dark Ages, depending on region
::[[Darklord]]: Arcapatos Miguel Agustin

A deeply spiritual domain wracked with internal conflict, for its leader is a priest who cares nothing for the realm, and everything for chasing a "holy relic" that evades his every attempt to grasp it.

=====Cumbre de Oro=====
::Cultural Level: Savage (Iron Age ruins, Medieval Avaricios)
::[[Darklord]]: Anibal Coronado

A cursed city of vast riches, a pastiche of El Dorado, haunted by the undead remnants of an explorer's party that gave their lives to find those riches and still refused to stop searching for wealth. This domain is actually a part of the larger Mictlan domain.

===The Islands of Terror===
=====Arlington Farm=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance decayed to Dark Ages
::Landscape: Single large wheat & corn farm
::Motif: Killer Scarecrows
::[[Darklord]]: Henry Arlington

The cursed farm of a farmer so obsessed with the success of his land that he not only killed to acquire it, but he began performing blood rites to ensure its success, murdering people and hiding their bodies in his scarecrows. Eventually, his cursed creations turned on him and turned him into one of them. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Bluetspur=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Age
::Landscape: Temperate hills, plains, and mountains
::Motif: [[Yog-Sothothery]]
::[[Darklord]]: The [[Illithid]] God-Brain

Meaning "Blood Trail" in German, it's a desolate wasteland with nightly, violent electrical storms on the surface. Beneath the surface lie the maddening and sprawling cities of illithids and their tortured and experimented slaves. This is also the home of the infamous Vampiric Mind Flayers, a creature that is technically indestructible in AD&D.

=====Callista=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Flooded Islets
::Motif: Gothic Vienna
::[[Darklord]]: Rafe Ungard

A once large island that has been reduced to tiny islets by intense flooding, peopled with a passionately chivalric (in the sense of "women are sacred and must be protected") people who claim to be the ''true'' [[Vistani]], ignorant of the fact that they are actually the cursed reincarnations of the true Vistani seen elsewhere in the Misty Realms. Because only 20% of their children are girls, they are overwhelmingly, patronizingly chivalric, and will sooner die than hurt women. The realm is also home to a large population of [[Paka]], who believe it to be a defiled holy site and hate the Callistans passionately. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Davion=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Shifts
::Motif: Dueling Psyches
::[[Darklord]]: Davion the Mad

A twisting realm that was created when a miscast Wish spell merged the mindscapes of the wizard Davion and his three hirelings - the male [[mage]] Ausgustus, the male [[fighter]] Boromar, and the female [[cleric]] of [[Loviatar]] Narana - into a single unit, leaving them struggling for dominion.

=====The Eternal Torture=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Decaying Sailing Ship
::Motif: [[Ghoul]] Ship
::[[Darklord]]: Miles Havelocke

The cursed ship of Miles Havelocke, a mutineer who led his crew to commit cannibalism upon the loyal members of the crew. Now a crew of [[ghast]]s, they endlessly search for land, attacking and feeding upon any unlucky ships they encounter as their passage leads them to the Nocturnal Sea, the Sea of Sorrows, and the oceans off all other domains, but never to the land they desperately wish to reach. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Farelle=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Woodlands
::Motif: Acceptance of Self
::[[Darklord]]: Jark Karn, The Jackal Who Would Not Be A Coward

An island splinter of the Wildlands, inhabited by a burgeoning population who are genuinely warm, welcoming and thriving. A pity that this is the manifestation of the darklord's curse. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====G'Henna=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Cold and temperate hills, plains, mountains, and deserts
::Motif: Corrupt [[Theocracy]]
::[[Darklord]]: Yagno Petrovna

Here a starving population works the fields to produce food to be sacrificed for the god [[Zhakata]]. Unfortunately the god doesn't exist and priests of the god eat the offerings, while the farmers starve themselves waiting for a god that will never come.

=====The House of Lament=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Mansion
::Motif: Haunted/Evil House
::[[Darklord]]: The House Itself

The House of Lament is a cursed structure that is simultaneous domain and darklord; a haunted structure that demands the sacrifice of human souls in an effort to quell its inescapable loneliness.

=====I'Cath=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Temperate Forest
::Motif: [[Oriental Adventures|Chinese Ghost Stories]]
::[[Darklord]]: Tsien Chiang

A tiny Island of Terror inhabited only by its Darklord and her four daughters - the three evil daughters Hate, Spite and Scream, all of whom are variant Con-tinh (evil spirit women), and the benevolent, tormented good daughter Nightingale. Her domain is similar to Forlorn in that it's basically a glorified dungeon, with literally nothing to do except show up and defeat the Darklord or die trying, except it's [[Oriental Adventures|Chinese]], not Scottish. Tsien Chiang is a misandrist [[necromancer]] from [[Kara-tur]], based on an ''incredibly'' minor character from the [[Forgotten Realms]] lore. She can also transform into an evil [[Treant]].

=====Immerabt=====
::Cultural Level: Late Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate & Cold Plains, Mountains and Aquatic
::Motif: When Death Becomes Relief
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll

An incredibly advanced domain whose scientific prowess can challenge that of Lamordia's, especially in medical sciences. It bulges with life to the point of being overrun with it, and yet death is a mercy that all too few can find, especially under the watchful eye of the Healer's Guild. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Incitatus=====
::Cultural Level: Classical reduced to Stone Age
::Landscape: Desolate, Lifeless City and rural surroundings
::Motif: Scientific Hubris Brings Apocalypse
::[[Darklord]]: Ahasveros

The lifeless remains of what was once a great scientific civilization, one that destroyed itself attempting to harness the power of the sea to annihilate an enemy nation with an artificially created tidal wave. Now, all that remains is the reclusive ghostly remains of the scientist who created that tidal wave, and destroyed his own people with it. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Kalidnay=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Desert
::Motif: [[Dark Sun|Athas]]
::[[Darklord]]: Thakok-An

The city and lands surrounding Kalidnay in Athas, which are nothing but ruins within [[Dark Sun]]'s setting proper. Its inhabitants actually prefer the Demiplane of Dread to actually living in Athas. Just let that sink in.

=====Karss=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Massive Prison in the middle of nowhere
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Warden Jonar Tamh

Formerly the Great Prison of the [[Harmonium]], an experiment in reformation-focused incarceration launched by the Hardheads on the faction's homeworld of Ortho, the warden's descent into cruelty and draconian punishments in defiance of the experiment's focus led to its being ripped from Ortho and stranded in the Mists. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Kislova=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Mountainous Grasslands
::Motif: Futility of Power Behind the Throne
::[[Darklord]]: Baroness Ilsabet Obour

A domain adapted from the Ravenloft novel "Baroness of Blood", ruled over by a malevolent [[alchemist]] turned pain-eating monster. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====The Lost Wizard's Tower=====
::Cultural Level: Savage, vestiges of Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forest & Hills
::Motif: Obsessive Love
::[[Darklord]]: [[Jinx]]

Once, there was a cat; a [[familiar]] to a powerful [[alchemist]] and [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale. Then she grew overbold with her experiments and tested a formula on her familiar in order to enhance his intelligence. It worked all too well; now, Jinx could think as well as any human... and get jealous. That jealousy led to her death, and now it leads to the death of any arcane spellcaster whom Jinx tries to take as her replacement. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Miseria=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate hills, forests, caves
::Motif: Ghostly Hauntings
::[[Darklord]]: Cassandre Desesprits

A rugged and inhospitable land whose people struggle to survive and put food on the tables, all whilst dealing with the vast legions of ghosts that haunt the realm. And nobody suspects that a humble barmaid with a heart full of spite and selfishness is the ultimate cause for their damnation. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====The Nightmare Lands=====
::Cultural Level: None
::Landscape: Ever-Changing
::Motif: Nightmares
::[[Darklord]]: The Nightmare Man and his Nightmare Court

A strange realm that exists halfway between the Demiplane of Dread and the [[Plane of Dreams]], ruled over by Darklord-like figures who live to visit mortals with nightmares and ultimately draw them into complete insanity.

=====The Northlands=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric declined to Medieval, Early Medieval declined to Dark Ages
::Landscape: Temperate forests, hills, mountains, plains, swamps
::Motif: [[Vikings]]
::[[Darklord]]: Jarl Gravstein Hansen

A land patterned after the ancient Norse lands, where one Jarl's selfishness is causing the decline of everything his people had worked for. This netbook canon domain debuted in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002, and was revisited in its 2003 issue.

=====Nosos=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Polluted Hellscape
::Motif: Rampant Pollution, Capitalism Gone Wrong
::[[Darklord]]: Malus Sceleris

A hellish polluted pit of a domain, where disease runs rampant amidst mountains of filth and sewerage in a sky clouded with fumes, smoke and gas.

=====Nzari=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age, Renaissance in Mr. Klein's camp
::Landscape: Tropical Rainforest
::Motif: Darkest Africa
::[[Darklord]]: Gatwe and Mr. Klein.

A domain inspired by the Darkest Africa tropes in general and the novel Heart of Darkness in particular. A land of cannibalistic natives, jungle monsters, and a brutal overlord who thinks of himself as the civilizing force, begging the question: "who is the real savage?" This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2003.

=====Odiare=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate settled area
::Motif: Twisted Pinocchio
::[[Darklord]]: Maligno

Island from [[Masque of the Red Death|Gothic Earth's]] Italy, populated by children and the [[carrionette]]s who killed the adults that used to live here. Naturally, all the kiddos are quite concerned about what'll happen when they're old enough to be labeled an adult.

=====Olympus=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Temeprate Forest & Hills, Cold Mountains, Warm Aquatic
::Motif: Greek Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Hercules

A pastiche of mythological Greece, ruled over by a pantheon of Living Gods - fallen heroes who have taken the identities of the Greek Deities as their own. And the once shining hope against those cruel, petty deities is in fact the worst of them all. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====The Raging Tears=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Single Rotting Ship
::Motif: Ghost Ship
::[[Darklord]]: Urdogen "The Red"

The cursed vessel of a long-forgotten pirate from [[Forgotten Realms|Faerun]], whose restless soul is condemned to wander the seas forever and never attain the power he once knew as the feared pirate king of the Inner Sea of Faerun. Whilst the ghost ship can be found in any sea in the Demiplane, or even sometimes beyond, its physical remains lie in the Sea of Sorrows, and must be found if one would put Urdogen to his long-cheated fate. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====Rokushima Táiyoo=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape: Archipelago with forests, hills, and mountains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy Japan
::[[Darklord]]: Haki Shinpi

Four islands surrounded by a poisonous salt water ocean. Each island's ruler hates the others, whilst the Darklord (their father) is forced to watch as they tear apart his dreams of unity and peace. It's also the home of the [[Akikage]] (ghost ninjas), [[Hebi-no-Onna]]s (snake women), and [[Kizoku]] (vampiric womanizers). Despite a Dark Ages cultural level, it's interested in the gunpowder weapons of Dementlieu and Darkon. Fun fact: the ''Anesthesia'' spell is popular here, as its use allows the dying to face death with a clear mind, and thus die with honor.

Strangely, the capitals of the four warring brothers have the Japanese names of various real world countries: Beikoku (米国, United States of America), Eikoku (英国, England), Chuugoka (corruption of 中国, China), and Roshiya (Literally just Russia said funny). As long as it sounds Japanese! Sadly, that's more than can be said for the Dark Lord's name...

=====Romagna=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Mild Plains and Forests
::Motif: Eternal Love
::[[Darklord]]: Serenissa D'Aubliet

A peaceful and gentle agricultural domain that seems free of the darkness of other, grimmer realms. But its shadows still linger, in the form of a spectral darklord who, whilst powerless to affect the natives, has no such restrictions against preying on visitors. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====Saarkaath=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Mountains, Forest
::Motif: Blood Purity
::[[Darklord]]: Hakaan na Uruk

A realm of [[half-orc]]s turned inwards into a brutal and pointless butchery, where the inhabitants try to claim "purity" of either [[human]] or [[orc]]ish heritage despite all being mixed race. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====San Bartolome=====
::Cultural Level: Middle Ages
::Landscape: Warm, Rugged, Mountainous
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Isabel de Sargas

A theocratic tropical paradise that is obsessed with the need to attain spiritual purification through righteous behavior and serial reincarnation. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====Scaena=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: The inside of a theater
::Motif: Mad Artistry
::[[Darklord]]: Lemot Sediam Juste

The personal theatre of Lemot Sediam Juste, who went insane and murdered his entire cast of actors, then burned down the theatre with himself in it, all because he couldn't accept that he was only good at writing comedies and he was a fucking terrible author of tragedies. Now it wanders the Misty Realms, luring in victims to serve as cast and audience alike, all ultimately to meet destruction.

=====Seradan=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temeprate Forests, Hills
::Motif: [[Stupid Nuetral]]
::[[Darklord]]: Geren Horstadt

A domain from which all of the metaphorical life has been sapped; a dull and colorless place of dull and colorless people, its inhabitants almostly aggressively average, sluggish and dreamy in their actions. All the better to torment its darklord. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Secrets.

=====Souragne=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Tropical Swamps
::Motif: Southern Gothic
::[[Darklord]]: Anton Misroi

It's basically the Ravenloft version of the Antebellum South as a whole and New Orleans in particular.

=====Staunton Bluffs=====
::Cultural Level: Middle Ages
::Landscape: Cold Prairies and Forests
::Motif: Cowardice and treachery
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Torrence Bleysmith

A small realm of prairies, overseen by the mad, bitter ghost of the man who caused the downfall of the people who once dwelled here.

=====Stonewall=====
::Cultural Level: Civalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Mountains
::Motif: Puritan Intolerance
::[[Darklord]]: Bethany Stone

Once a small town near Salem, Massachusetts in the real world - or at least its Gothic Earth analogue, Stonewall has been ripped from its moorings and cast into the myths thanks to the machinations of its darklord; a woman so self-righteous and hateful that she killed her own daughter to carry on her moral crusade. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Tower of the Phantom Lover=====
::Cultural Level: NA
::Landscape: Tower over underground labyrinth
::Motif: Sexual Predation
::[[Darklord]]: The Phantom Lover

The mysterious hideaway of the malevolent spirit known as the Phantom Lover, who seeks to seduce and then slaughter women pining for lost love.

=====Tsuu-y-Teke=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Warm Deserts, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Desert Country Native American Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Heresa Heri, The Vulture King

A domain inspired by the myths of desert-dwelling Native American cultures. A realm of seemingly eternal day, haunted by a malevolent vulture-spirit who once tried to steal all the lights of day and night for himself. Netbook canon. First appeared in the [[Books of S|Book of Shadows]] for 2e, then was updated to 3e in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Vechor=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Warm Forests, Hills & Swamps
::Motif: Insanity Made Real
::[[Darklord]]: Easan the Mad

A vaguely India-esque domain ruled over by an insane [[elf]] [[wizard]] who has the power to reshape the surroundings based on his current mad whim.

=====Vin'Ejal=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Arctic Coastal Mountain
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Benada Nameless

A frigid island that drifts in an icy sea, whose people struggle to survive in the face of the eternal winter and the packs of [[seawolf|seawolves]] haunting their rich seas, haunted by a most unusual darklord; a [[yuan-ti]]-blooded [[weresnake]]! Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====Vulnara=====
::Cultural Level: Late Chivalric to Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills, Mountains
::Motif: All-Consuming Bitterness
::[[Darklord]]: Kasselheim Blightlyng

A realm of unusually somber and technology-focused [[gnome]]s and [[svirfneblin]], shaped by the prejudices of a bitter, self-loathing, humor-hating gnomish [[vampire]] cursed with failing senses and growing madness. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Vultharesk=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages, Renaissance on the Godwyn Estate
::Landscape: Cold Mountains
::Motif: Moral Guardianship
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Trevor Godwyn, "The Mirror Man"

A strict, almost puritanical domain obsessed with the necessities of survival and averse to all things that are not "right" or "proper". But this attitude is not born out of morals or self-righteousness, but fear, for they are haunted by an ever-present spirit who will punish those that fails to live up to his strict sense of decency. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Shadows.

=====Wayward on the Bone Sands=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Barren Desert
::Motif: Cannibalism, Killer Kids
::[[Darklord]]: Caleb Wicks

A cursed desert village of former humans turned into [[quevari]] after being seduced into genocide against (and cannibalism of) their [[gnome]] neighbors by the malicious child cannibal Caleb Wicks. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Secrets.

=====Whal=====
::Cultural Level: Renaisssance
::Landscape: Cold Forested Hills
::Motif: Moby Dick
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Jacobi Robertsonn

A sturdy, practical domain dedicated to the hunting of fish, seals and whales... no mean feat when your land is home to the demiplane's largest congregation of [[wereorca]]s. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====The Winding Road=====
::Cultural Level: Nonexistent
::Landscape: Random road
::Motif: Random Encounter
::[[Darklord]]: The Headless Horseman

Hands down one of the worst Domains in classical Ravenloft, the Winding Road is a glorified random encounter in which the party is suddenly attacked by the Headless Horseman, a powerful [[undead]] warrior mounted on horseback. Who is he? Well, there's three stories about where he came from. The first one is that he was an innocent man executed by Drakov's men. The second one is that he was a man who chopped off his own head rather than be killed by one of Strahd's men. And the third is that he was a bard who failed to entertain Ivana Boritsi as she bathed, so she chopped off his head and mixed his blood into her bathwater. If you think that none of those sound like a Darklord's backstory, you're not wrong. Oh, and you also have to fight the undead severed heads that precede and then follow the Horseman's run-by attack, which includes several [[medusa]] heads.

=====Yatehcaa=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Mountains, High Desert
::Motif: Native American Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Coyote

A domain based on certain Native American myths, where the people live simple, happy lives, whilst trying to avoid the attentions of the malicious trickster and fallen hero-deity Coyote. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

==Cyre?==
In [[Eberron]], the nation of Cyre was destroyed in the Day of Mourning, leaving only the [[Mournland]] behind. That Cyre became a Demiplane of Dread is perhaps the most common theory on the origin of the Mournland within the fandom, as it checks all the boxes for explanations.
*The Mournland stops at Cyre’s artificial, political, borders and thus had to be caused by some intelligent actor. The Dark Powers certainly count. It also explains why it stops so exactly at the water that the docks were left behind.
*The Mournland’s border is a wall of “dead-gray mist”. The link is obvious. In 4th Edition, this dead-gray mist supernaturally drains people of hope.
*The Forge of War states that Dannel ir'Wynarn insistence that the crown of Galifar belonged to her was the only thing keeping the Last War going, making her prime Darklord material.
*Dark Sun material describes Kalidnay as having been destroyed by "unknown disaster" that left it only "a jumble of ruins". The ruins in the Mournland are described being "moved", "rearranged", "turned 90 degrees", or "found miles from where war-era maps say they should be", which certainly can be described as a "jumble". The one adventure that travels to the ruined city (DSM2) mentions several structures remain intact, and many appear to be ruins purely because they're centuries old, which fits the multiple Mournland adventures with surviving structures, and several people seem to have died suddenly in a way that their body was intact. (While some of the Mournland's signature features are absent, all outside descriptions of Kalidnay are centuries after the fact while all descriptions of the Mournland are 0-4 years after its creation.)

None of this will ever be confirmed, and it’s unlikely to be anti-confirmed, as the truth of the Mourning is one of Eberron’s mysteries that exists to have no answer but what the [[Dungeon Master]] gives them. The setting's creator has however concurred it's a good option if one wanted some bit of Eberron in Ravenloft.

The theory received a bit of a nod in 5th edition with the reveal of a new Domain of Dread that is a fragment of Cyre that was taken by the mists on the Day of Mourning.

==4th Edition: Islands of Terror==
In the [[World Axis]], the idea of the Demiplane of Dread being its own independent universe was basically dropped. The idea, however, remained in the form of the ''Domains of Dread''; regions in the [[Shadowfell]] created in response to great evils in the Material World, essentially mimicking the Islands of Terror format of the Demiplane, but with one major difference: these Domains are still part of the Shadowfell as a whole. As a result, if you can find the rite or secret or whatever it is that grants you passage, then you can flee the Domain through its misty veil and into the wider Shadowfell... which isn't necessarily that much of an improvement, but hey.

The idea of the Core is complete absent in 4th edition. Perhaps, if [[Ravenloft]] had been revived in this setting, the Core would have instead become more of a cursed but otherwise normal world, similar to and yet separate from the Domains of Dread seen in the Shadowfell. We'll never know.

The 4e Domains of Dread consist of the following:

=====Sunderheart=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Half-ruined city on a cliff's edge at the edge of a swampy river dela
::Motif: Diabolist Grand Guignol
::[[Darklord]]: Ivania Dreygu and Vorno "The Ghoul" Kahnebor

Originally the [[Bael Turath]] city of Harrack Unarth, Sunderheart's doom came when it came under the control of the lovers Ivania Dreygu and Vorno Kahnebor, the [[Nentir Vale]] version of Romeo and Juliet... if Romeo and Juliet were debauched hedonistic [[tiefling]]s who engaged in rape, murder and cannibalism and who massacred their entire families so they could be together. Eventually, Vorno became so vile that even Ivania grew sick of him, so she murdered him by feeding him a servant girl whom she had fed with a deadly poison. Then she woke up in Sunderheart with her [[ghoul]]ified [[undead]] lover fused to her back like a monstrous parasitic twin. Now she rules by day over the half of the city still inhabited by the living, and Vorno the Ghoul rules over the undead-haunted ruins at night.

=====Graefmotte=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Dense Pine Forest, Mountains
::Motif: Starvation
::[[Darklord]]: Lord Durven Graef

When the [[Yeenoghu]]-worshipping hordes of the White Ruin threatened the empire of Nerath in the [[Nentir Vale]], Lord Graef was the ruler of a minor frontier province who had already lost two of his three children. Desperate to preserve his family legacy, he was determined that his final son, Geoffery Graef, would not answer King Elidyr's call to take up arms against the horde. When his son disagreed, they fought, and Lord Graef accidentally killed his son by causing him to fall and fatally strike his head. Which was when the [[gnoll]] warbands fell upon Graefmotte. Lord Graef led the fighting over the night, and was near-mortally wounded; disemboweled and with an arm bitten off, nobody expected him to cling to life for a day and a night... never mind for his wounds to fully heal. Ever since then, Graefmotte has been a land cursed, where its people face a slow, withering death by starvation, or a quick, bloody one at the jaws of the maddened gnolls and starvation-spawned [[ghoul]]s that haunt the ever-shifting forest.

=====Monadhan=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Tropical Rainforest
::Motif: Treachery
::[[Darklord]]: Arantor

During the war between [[Bael Turath]] and [[Arkhosia]], the [[Metallic Dragon#Silver Dragon|Silver Dragon]] Arantor and his daughter mrissa were called upon to destroy a remote Turathi military outpost, almost hidden within thick tropical rainforest, whose isolation and surroundings made it virtually unreachable by ground-based forces. But after they hit their target, they realized that their intel had been faulty; this was no military camp, it was a refugee center for Turathi civilians! Father and daughter quarreled over what to do, with Imrissa wanting to return to Arkhosia and take responsibility for their crimes, whilst the glory-hound Arantor insisted they conceal it and protect their reputations. The argument grew so heated that Arantor slew his daughter, and then, stricken by guilt, he massacred the survivors of his first attack before becoming a plague upon the Turathi until his death. Which was when he awoke as a [[dracolich]] in a cavern deep below a twisted reflection of Monadhan, which has now become a gathering point for traitors. The greater the betrayal, and the more pathetic the reason, the more likely the perpetrator is to find a place within Monadhan - whether by being swallowed by the Mists, or by awakening there alive and whole after dying for their misdeeds. As a result, Monadhan is now an oubliette for treacherous scum from across time and space.

=====The Endless Road=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: An endless road winding through forests, hills and plains
::Motif: You can't escape your sins
::[[Darklord]]: Eli van Hassen

The tiny little roadside town of Tranquility was a peaceful place, until the day a four-headed [[hydra]] lurched from the fens and began plaguing the people. When a wandering [[adventurer]] known only as "The Horseman" arrived and slew the beast, the people celebrated. But the town's ruler, Eli van Hassen, a man forever plagued by resentment and inferiority over his provincial abode, resented the hero's fame. He forced his daughter to slander the man, accusing him of rape, and whipped the people of Tranquility into a frenzied mob who executed their savior despite his former protests. Now Eli and his daughter inhabit a fortified mansion that sits on the side of a great road, which stretches on to infinity; unless the Road decides to let you go, which it can do to anywhere in the [[Multiverse]], you can walk forever and never leave. Of course, that risks attack by the undead remains of the Headless Horseman, who wants revenge on the van Hassens, but will happily settle for anyone else he can get his hands on.

=====Timbergorge=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Dense confider forest
::Motif: Nature's Savagery
::[[Darklord]]: Silvermaw

When a naive [[treant]] allowed [[human]]s to settle in the planeshifting forest that was an [[archfey]]'s garden under his care, he was horrified when they began to create a fire to keep them warm as they slept. But when he attacked in an effort to quench the flames, he burned himself and then set the forest ablaze, leaving it to burn as he focused on slaying the human interlopers. For this, his master cut the garden away and banished it to the [[Shadowfell]]. Here, the tribal humans have become a pack of werewolves, endlessly hunting and being hunted by the mad, wounded treant, who has coated his mouth with molten silver so that he may better rend and bite his foes; hence his name "Silvermaw".

==5th Edition: The Alternate Continuity==
In February 2021, it was announced across the internet that the Demiplane of Dread would at last make an official return as a D&D setting for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] in the form of [[Van Richten's Guide]] to [[Ravenloft]]. But it also openly announced that the 30 domains of dread that would be debuting in the book would include a mixture of brand new domains, classic domains, and revamped/reimagined takes on old domains - something that immediately began raising hackles amongst the Ravenloft fandom, who tend towards the [[grognard]]ier side of the fence. Why did they do this? Was it because the last version of Ravenloft-as-setting was done by [[White Wolf]] and there were legal entanglements preventing [[Wizards of the Coast]] from reusing their inventions? Was it because a lot of Ravenloft classic lore was actually kind of stupid and in desperate need of revamping? Was it because of [[SJW]]s? (probably a little considering some of the weirder changes made) Some combination thereof? The world may never know.

Either way, the 5e version of the Demiplane of Dread thusly has its own unique take on the different Domains, which this section will try to break down for comparison's sake.

5th edition no longer has the Core although a few Clusters still exist, but are now treated as single domains, and also changes the rules for traveling between domains. If the borders of a domain are not closed, entering the mists on the borders only takes you to another domain if you get a lucky roll, and usually you will end up back in the domain where you started or just wander the mists going nowhere. And even if you do get lucky it is up to the DM to decide where to drop you. You can choose what domain you want to go to and bypass this roll by carrying a mist talisman, which is an item related in some way to that domain or at least that domain's theme, and each domain has a few possible items you can use as a talisman for it. If you have the Mist Walker dark gift, you can travel to any domain that you know the name of without a talisman, but at the cost of not being able to stay in one place for too long.

===Detailed Domains===
These domains have received descriptions a few pages long.

=====Barovia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

It's literally just Barovia as seen in [[Curse of Strahd]]. The only major change is that now the Dark Powers have started to get creative and may have Tatyana reincarnate as someone unexpected to mess with Strahd.

=====Bluetspur 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Utterly alien
::Motif: Alien Horror, amnesia
::[[Darklord]]: The God-Brain

Aside from some slight tweaks to the backstory of the God-Brain and a shift in focus to more of an "alien abductions/unspeakable alien experiments" motif, Bluetspur is basically unchanged.

=====Borca 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Outside of the changes to the [[Darklord]]s, there's nothing new here.

=====[[The Carnival]] 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Nepenthe

No longer a wandering point of light, [[The Carnival]] is now a free-floating island of terror, with the role of [[Darklord]] being shared between Isolde and Nepenthe, a cursed sword she carries. The backstory has also been changed extensively, involving a counterpart to the Carnival run by [[shadar-kai]]. The Carnival is also haunted by the ''Litwick Market'', a black market of malicious fey with a grudge against the Carnival who invariably show up once the Carnival settles down and start making trouble. Also, the Twisting is no longer a thing.

=====Darkon 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: The end of the world
::[[Darklord]]: Azalin Rex, currently MIA

The first "continuation" domain, Azalin went missing during an event called the Hour of Ascension and now Darkon is falling apart, slowly being dissolved by the Mists. The domain has become split into four islands. During the day the mists can be crossed as normal, but during the night anything covered by the mists disappears and the mists swallow a little bit more of the land in tiny steps or in huge floods. As was the case during the original [[Grim Harvest|Shrouded Years]], a number of demilords are trying and failing to hold it together. Collectively known as The Inheritors, they consist of the vampire Alcio Metus (sister to the late Baron Metus), Cardinna Artazas and the Necrichor of Darcalus Rex, and Madame Talisveri Eris. The only clue about where Azalin went is a strange glowing object called the King's Tear which appeared floating over Darkon at the same time that he vanished.

=====Dementlieu 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Masquerade and imposter syndrome
::[[Darklord]]: Saidra d'Honaire

Completely rewritten, Dementlieu is now an impoverished city where everybody tries desperately to pretend they are richer and more important than they actually are or else lose their clout, and avoid getting exposed as frauds lest they be disintegrated by its new [[Darklord]]; Saidra d'Honaire. Also has a Masque of the Red Death thing going on, making it a bit like Sanguinia.

=====Falkovnia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Zombie Apocalypse
::[[Darklord]]: Vladeska Drakov

Completely rewritten, Falkovnia is no longer the "war horror" domain, but instead a zombie apocalypse domain, where new [[Darklord]] Vladeska Drakov struggles to keep the living alive in the face of monthly sieges by massive armies of the [[Walking Dead]]. Maybe they didn't want [[/pol/]] fanboying the original Vlad?

=====Har'Akir 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Completely rewritten, Har'Akir is now a sprawling, heavily populated land where [[necrocracy|the living bow to a mummified aristocracy]] and Ankhtepot actually wishes for death.

=====Haz'lan 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Wild magic, environmental destruction, magic-based classism
::[[Darklord]]: Hazlik

This retconned version of the domain has dropped the Mulans vs. Rashemani racism of the past and is now being devastated by a series of arcane apocalypses. [[Darklord]] Hazlik now suffers a combination of his old curse and Azalin's curse.

=====I'Cath 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Denial of reality
::[[Darklord]]: Tsien Chiang

Completely rewritten, I'Cath has gone from a glorified [[Oriental Adventures]] [[dungeon]] to a crumbling city where the population is largely trapped in an eternal slumber, forced to constantly work at building and rebuilding a dream-version of I'Cath at the behest of [[Darklord]] Tsien Chiang, who can never be satisfied with what she has. When the inhabitants wake, they must scavenge for food in a city constantly being rebuilt by Tsien Chian's armies of [[Jiangshi]], who will not harm a sleeper, but will happily tear an awake mortal limb from limb.

=====Kalakeri=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: War-torn nation, faction mechanics
::[[Darklord]]: Ramya Vasavadan

New domain, although it's intended to take the place of the old domain of Sri Raji, which is mentioned as an alternative name for it. This India-themed domain is locked in an eternal civil war between its [[Darklord]], Ramya Vasavadan, and her two [[fiend]]ish siblings; Arijani the [[Rakshasa]] and Reeva the [[Arcanaloth]].

=====Kartakass 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Show business, predatory business practices, werewolves
::[[Darklord]]: Harkon Lukas

Largely unchanged, save for the revisions to [[Darklord|Harkon Lukas']] story and the replacement of [[wolfwere]]s with [[Loup-garou]].

=====Lamordia 5e=====
::Cultural Level: Steampunk
::Landscape: Arctic
::Motif: Mad science, biting cold, implicit kaiju
::[[Darklord]]: Viktra Mordenheim

Basically unchanged, save for a new emphasis on an arctic climate and the tweaks to its [[Darklord]], replacing Viktor Mordenheim and Adam with Viktra Mordenheim and Elise. The darklord curse has been given a twist, too: Viktra succeeded where Victor would perpetually fail-- but she cannot duplicate her success and the living (golem-like) Elise shuns her and hides in the wilderness. Also, the whalers operating out of Ludendorf may or may not be hunting creatures [[Kraken|more fearsome than actual whales]], and it's heavily implied that there may be a radioactive kaiju hibernating under the mountain range not-so-subtly named "The Sleeping Beast".

=====Mordent 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Ghosts and haunted houses
::[[Darklord]]:

The only change here is to [[Darklord|Wilfred Godefroy's]] curse and backstory, which now involves the famous Alchemist's Apparatus first introduced to [[Ravenloft]] lore in [[I10: Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill]].

=====Richemulot 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Pandemic, wererats
::[[Darklord]]: Jacqueline Renier

Retconned into a plague-stricken nation barely avoiding crumbling into total ruination through the machinations of [[Darklord|Jacqueline Renier]], who's also responsible for the plagues in the first place as she's a one-percenter who despises the middle-class and people who aren't wererats.

=====Tepest 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Wickerman/Midsommar type of stories
::[[Darklord]]: Lorinda Mindefisk

Sitting somewhere between continuation and retcon, Tepest has lost its anti-fey inquisition and is now focused on its [[Darklord]]; Lorinda Mindefisk, who imprisoned her sisters in a cauldron because they refused to let her have a child.

=====Valachan 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Jungle
::Motif: The deadliest game
::[[Darklord]]: Chakuna

Similarly to Tepest, Valachan is supposed to be a continuation of its former self, although there's a lot of retcons to the lore. Since [[Darklord|Baron Urik von Kharkov]] was slain by Chakuna, the jungles have turned hungry, rendering the realm a land where everything is out for blood and those appetites are barely kept in check by regular ceremonial blood sacrifices known as the Trial of Hearts.

===Summarized Domains===
These domains only received a short block of text about them. Several of them are completely new domains and so are intended to just be ideas for Dungeon Masters to build on.

=====Cyre 1313, The Mourning Rail=====
::Cultural Level: Dungeonpunk
::Landscape: A magical train traveling through the Mists
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: The Last Passenger

The first ever [[Eberron]] Domain of Dread. On the day that Cyre was destroyed by the Mourning, a train was about to carry a bunch of refugees who saw the disaster coming out of Cyre, but the train's departure was delayed by a mysterious VIP who threw hundreds of the train's passengers out to make room for their self and their retinue and to be sure nobody on the train would learn their identity, and so the train departed too late. The train was taken into the mists when the Mourning hit where it became a mobile domain constantly running from the Mourning which the passengers think is still chasing them. The passengers still haven't noticed that the Mourning already killed them.

=====Forlorn 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====Ghastria 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====G'henna 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====Invidia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Rewritten; Gabrielle Aderre is now the [[Darklord]], constantly dabbling in black magic and conjuring all manner of outsiders to try and ensure that her beloved (and implicitly possessed) son Malocchio will have the best of futures.

=====Keening 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Now has a living population who live in terror of its [[banshee]] [[Darklord]]. They fear the Darklord so much that they have actually destroyed their own sense of hearing to protect themselves.

=====Klorr=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Surreal environment
::Motif: Impending Doom
::[[Darklord]]: Klorr

New domain mentioned in brief, a series of shattered islands floating through a misty netherworld, swirling around a blazing giant eye, where one island is obliterated every hour only for another to take its place.

=====Markovia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Tropical island
::Motif: Flowers for Algernon syndrome, furries
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Frantisek Markov

Rewritten into a mixture of Dr. Moreau and Dr. Jekyll.

=====The Nightmare Lands 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Nightmares
::[[Darklord]]: The Nightmare Court

Largely unchanged, save for the new origin of the Nightmare Court as multiple personas birthed from the mind of a powerful but monstrous [[psion]]icist who tries to run from the crimes of her past and deny that they ever existed.

=====Niranjan=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Island monastery
::Motif: [[Path of Inspiration]]
::[[Darklord]]: Sarthak

New domain mentioned in brief, tied to Kalakeri, ruled over by a corrupted [[Metallic Dragon|Brass Dragon]] who poses as a ''sadhu'' to lure victims into sacrificing their worldly goods for his hoard before he consumes their souls and replaces it with an obedient shadow.

=====Nova Vaasa 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Myar Hiregaard

Rewritten; now less Russian and more Mongolian, with a female [[Darklord]] named Myar Hiregaard who united the warring tribes of her homelands, only to turn them against each other once more when she grew bored with peacetime.

=====Odaire 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for the minor detail that Maligno ''changed'' his name to that from his original, less ridiculous name of ''Figlio''.

=====The Rider's Bridge=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Yet another reinterpretation of the Headless Horseman, this time as a [[dullahan]] who shows up at important bridges in domain-specific forms and attacks anyone who tries to cross. Successfully crossing the bridge may transport you to a different domain.

=====Risibilos 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Parody
::[[Darklord]]: Doerdon

A super-minor domain originally mentioned in brief as part of the infamously terrible "Book of Crypts" anthology. Rewritten into a domain-hopping music hall, where the [[Iron Warriors|humorless]] former-king Doerdon is now condemned to an agonizing eternity as an entertainer, with a sentient ventriloquist dummy in the likeness of Strahd von Zarovich as his partner in comedy. Needless to say, don't be surprised if your DM brings a Strahd muppet to the table.

=====Scaena 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:
Unchanged from its original lore.

=====Sea of Sorrows 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

The Darklord is now Pietra van Rise, a vicious female [[pirate]] turned ghost or sea zombie (it's not clear which). Mention is also made of Blaustein (now ruled by the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives), Dominia (the patients are all avatars of Dr. Heinfroth), the Isle of the Ravens (unchanged), and the new domains of The Lighthouse, which features, well, a lighthouse, and Vigilant's Bluff, where an undead paladin offers refuge so long as you respect his faith.

=====The Shadowlands 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged.

=====Souragne 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Still Southern Gothic New Orleans, but Anton's got a new backstory as a sadistic prison warden and has been downgraded in terms of power.

=====Staunton Bluffs 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Largely identical, except the former [[darklord]] is now a good guy and his crime has been given to his retconned sister, Teresa Bleysmith.

=====Tovag 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

No longer connected to Cavitus, [[Kas]] now fixates on finding [[Vecna]] and resuming their ancient battle.

=====Vhage Agency=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: An office building
::Motif: Insanity, Film Noir
::[[Darklord]]: Flimira Vhage

A new domain in the form of a detective agency ruled over by Flimira Vhage, who remains unaware that literally the entire agency only exists in her own broken mind. Oh, and it literally looks like an old [[noir]] film brought to life, complete with everything inside being in different shades of monotone gray.

=====Zherisia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Serial killings
::[[Darklord]]: Sodo

The elaborate dread [[doppelganger]] society has been wiped out. Now there's just a starving city descending into madness and a single ancient doppelganger trying to preserve its existence through cannibalism. The sewers that used to be called Timor still exist but the marikiths have been replaced with [[Carrion Stalker]]s.

==Notable Non-Darklords==
* [[Van Richten]]
* [[Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins]]
* [[Jander Sunstar]]
* [[Alanik Ray]]
* [[Larissa Snowmane]]
* [[Vistani]]

{{Planescape-Cosmology}}
[[Category:Ravenloft]]

Demiplane of Dread

2021-06-19T04:18:28Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:54C9:8209:BC16:AF5C: /* Dementlieu 5e */

{{NeedsImages}}
'''The Demiplane of Dread''' is a unique [[Demiplane]] - or, perhaps more accurately, a series of interlinked demiplanes - within the [[Great Wheel]] cosmology of [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. This is the actual "world" in which the campaign setting of [[Ravenloft]] is based, and so the name is often used when trying to describe the "Ravenloft world".

The precise origins of the Demiplane of Dread are lost to history. Its creators are enigmatic beings known only as "The Dark Powers", who maintain and defend their creation with mighty magic and jealous zeal. It's believed they have some kind of mutual non-aggression pact with the various gods of the Great Wheel, but nothing canon is ever defined. It is believed to lie where the [[Ethereal Plane]] meets the [[Plane of Shadow]], but is able to manifest portals absolutely ''everywhere'', even in places normally restricted to planar portals, such as [[Dark Sun|Athas]] or the [[Phlogiston]]. Such portals usually appear as banks of fog or mist, but will adapt themselves to other sight-obscuring phenomena - and are usually one-way. Getting ''in'' is easy, but getting '''out'''? Canonically you won't be able to leave unless the Dark Powers will it, short of using artifact-level items like the dreaded Rift Spanner which just so happens to be the kind of item that could turn you into a [[Darklord]] just from getting it to work properly.

Aaand then came 3.5 which opened a doorway into the [[World Serpent Inn]], breaking the whole point of this prison plane. Here it's a failsafe for DMs when their parties reach their 16th birthday and are sick of Goth. Its doorway on the Demiplane's side of things changes every night. Mind you, even back in AD&D, portals '''out''' of the Demiplane of Dread were explicitly a thing and even listed in major [[splatbook]]s like the Domains of Dread - for example, the Isle of Lament in Lamordia houses one such portal, so you can leave just by going there, if you can sneak past Adam.

==Planar Traits==
The Demiplane of Dread's creators have molded the reality of this world into a new fashion, forcibly imposing the rules of [[Gothic Horror]] on the setting. There are many ways that this molding manifests, but some of the more overt include the following:
* [[Necromancer|Necromancy]] spells are empowered and rendered more dangerous; spells like Animate Dead will call up more creatures than the caster may be able to control, whilst spells that instantly kill their victims usually cause such victims to arise spontaneously as the [[undead]] - and often as ones quite pissed off at their killer. Certain non-necromancy, non-instant-kill spells even have a chance of doing this, such as Disintegrate turning a completely disintegrated victim into an incorporeal undead! Using any necromancy spell provokes a powers check unless it's purely defensive, doesn't affect undead, and doesn't manipulate life force; that list of "safe" spells is quite narrow.
* [[Diviner|Divination]] spells are pretty much worthless; spells that detect moral alignment invariably fail, spells aimed at detecting monstrous species either are unreliable (Detect Undead) or flatly won't work (using True Seeing to look for natural shapechangers), spells that revolve around mental contact risk driving you mad if you accidentally use them on certain inhuman creatures, and in general you can't trust the result of divination spells because the normal awareness of when such a spell has failed doesn't occur in the Demiplane of Dread. Oh, and Scrying type spells create a visible sensory apparatus that can alert your target that you're scrying on them, which can even serve as a conduit for things like gaze attacks. There's a practical reason for this; horrific things aren't quite as scary if you know their true nature too early, and so this element was put in to keep from having the DM tip their hands too soon and ruin the scare.
* [[Conjurer|Conjuration]] allows entities from other planes to be summoned, but they won't be able to return home when the spell expires. Obviously, quite a few of them will be ''very'' upset with their summoner because of this. Even before they figure this out, the binding aspects of conjuration spells are weaker in the Demiplane of Dread, giving summoned creatures a chance to escape its bonds the moment it arrives.
* [[Abjurer|Abjuration]] spells that banish creatures to another plane do not work. Rather, they ''appear'' to work but just toss the target somewhere else within the demiplane.
* [[Illusionist|Illusion]] spells that manipulate shadows are 20% more powerful, but the caster risks losing control of it when the spell ends, releasing a free-willed [[shadow]].
* Spells that directly interfere with the fabric of a Domain, such as manipulating weather, can often attract the attention of the resident [[Darklord]], and who might be able to subvert or negate these same spells if they have related powers.
* Teleportation spells are restricted; each domain is treated like its own separate plane of existence. High-level teleportation spells can overcome this if the border is not closed. Nothing can teleport out of a closed domain or the Demiplane entirely.
* Curses are empowered, and even non-spellcasters can potentially lay deadly or deforming curses on people if their rage or grief is intense enough to catch the notice of the [[Dark Powers]].
* The [[Dark Powers]] are watching everybody and seem to enjoy turning people into monsters that reflect their own evil deeds. When a creature performs some evil act, which range from casting necromantic spells to premeditated murder, the Dark Powers [[Powers Check|might notice]] and start the process. The changes are subtle or even helpful at first, allowing the victim to more easily perform his evil acts, which lures the victim into more evil, gaining more attention and transformation, until he is completely transformed into a monster or even a [[darklord]] of his own domain.
* Intelligent undead, like vampires, can tell if their minds are being read and can choose which thoughts they will project. Depending on the circumstances, this may be a false image passing them off as human or an up-close look at the most evil parts of their minds meant to drive the would-be mind reader insane.
* 5th edition's overhaul of the lore drops most of the above rules but adds some new ones. If you die in the Demiplane of Dread your soul does not move into the afterlife and is trapped there until it is eventually reincarnated. People who are resurrected after being dead for over 24 hour discover this and are traumatized by the experience.
* Also in 5th edition, Darklords can sense when somebody in their domain is trying to cast spells that contact beings on other planes and can make themselves the target of the spell.

==Mapping the Demiplane==
Geo-physically, the Demiplane of Dread consists of various bubbles of reality, ranging in size from a single room to full-fledged countries, all floating in a sea of ephemeral mist; each of these reality bubbles (called "Domains") is typically centered around a [[Darklord]], a villain whose evil caught the eyes of the Dark Powers and so they responded by imprisoning them within the Demiplane. 3rd edition's unpublished [[splatbook]] "[[Van Richten's Guide]] to the Mists" introduced the concept of ''Oubliettes'', which are basically prototype or abandoned Domains that don't contain a Darklord. A Domain may exist on its own (an "Island of Terror") or be physically coterminous with one or more more other domains, forming what is called a "Cluster". The largest and oldest Cluster in the Demiplane is called "The Core", and this is basically Ground Zero for the setting.

Traveling between Domains is a little tricky to describe. If two Domains are coterminous, you can simply walk between them, as if they were normal lands. If you want to get to a Domain that ''isn't'' coterminous, then you have to just walk into the Mists and hope you'll end up where you want to go. Certain spots are known to have what are essentially portals that can link different Domains together, in that traveling from these spots (which may require unique triggers before they kick in) will usually end you up in a specific Domain; known as "Mistways", these portals can be either one way or two way, and vary in reliability (aka, how likely you are to end up at the intended destination instead of fuck-knows-where) from "guaranteed" to "you rolls the dice, you takes your chances".

Traveling between Domains is made more complicated by the fact that most [[Darklord]]s have a power called "Closing the Borders," which causes the borders of their Domain to become enveloped in a barrier of some sort unique to that Darklord that prevents escape in some fashion - some are non-lethal, most will kill you if you try. A rare few can be circumvented by the right esoteric circumstances (for example, [[undead]] or [[construct]]s can safely walk through poisonous borders like that of Barovia, because they're fundamentally immune to poison), but in general this is the ultimate [[Railroading]] tool the DM has to keep you from just saying "fuck this" and leaving the domain.

Precisely why the Dark Powers collect these [[Darklord]]s is unknown, and theories abound; the Demiplane of Dread has been described as a prison, a gathering place for evil, a grand study into the nature of evil, a unique kind of Hell, or even a Purgatory by various fans.

Another great mystery is the nature of its native population. Some Domains were physically taken from their homeworlds, but most are described as "copies" rather than direct abductions of land. This then leaves players wondering: are the locals actually "real", or are they merely soulless simulacra - props in the grand theater of Gothic Horror tales that the Dark Powers are conducting? Nothing concrete has ever been given. This isn't entirely consistent however, with other originals becoming ruins (Like Kalidnay) or vanishing entirely (like Har’Akir).

===The Core===
As mentioned above, this is the "core" of Ravenloft, the sole normal-style continent where the bulk of the game focuses on. Think of it as something akin to the Sword Coast of the [[Forgotten Realms]], or Ansalon in [[Dragonlance]]. The precise layout has changed over Ravenloft's life, usually as a result of [[Advancing the Storyline]] - most prominently, it changed massively after the [[Grand Conjunction]], and then changed a little during both the [[Grim Harvest]] and the shift from 2e to 3e.

The Core is made up of the following Domains.

=====Barovia=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Blatant Dracula Knockoff
::[[Darklord]]: [[Strahd von Zarovich]]

This is the oldest domain in Ravenloft, the literal heart of the Demiplane of Dread. It's ruled by Strahd, and is basically Dracula in D&D. It is also home to the titular [[Castle Ravenloft]], Strahd's humble abode. This domain has been visited in literally ''every single edition'' of D&D after BECMI; even 4th edition, the only edition without an adaptation of I6 to its titles, has the adventure "Fair Barovia" in [[Dungeon Magazine]] #207, which has the party exploring Barovia and completing assorted side-quests.

=====Borca=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Poisoners, Italy under the Borgia Family
::[[Darklord]]: Ivana Boritsi

Originally, Borca was ruled by the Darklord Camille Boritsi, and was half its present size, sharing borders with the near-identical domain of Dorvini. Ivana poisoned her mother because her mom seduced her boyfriend, and during the Grand Conjunction, her domain and that of her cousin Ivan Dilisnya merged together due to their great similarities.

=====Darkon=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Age to Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills, Plains, Mountains & Swamps
::Motif: Generic [[Dark Fantasy]]
::[[Darklord]]: Azalin

Darkon is notable as the most overtly fantastical realm in the Demiplane of Dread, with a relatively huge population of [[demihuman]]s that sees humans going from the usual 90+% population merit to only 75% as well as the greatest amount of local toleration for arcane magic.

If one spends a month in the realm they lose their memories until they leave the domain, thinking they've always been from Darkon. Unfortunately, the new state from having lost memories convinces one to never leave unless forced to.

=====Dementlieu=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Plains
::Motif: Renaissance France/Victorian England
::[[Darklord]]: Dominic D'Honaire

Though not as overtly modeled on London as the domain of Paridon, Dementlieu definitely taps into the Gothic Urban Horror motif, as is made clear by the way it is home to myriad mystical mind-manipulators and the character Alanik Ray, who is basically Sherlock Holmes if he was an [[elf]]. It's considered the "cultural heart" of the Core.

=====Falkovnia=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Plains
::Motif: Military Horror, Fascism, Urban Squalor
::[[Darklord]]: Vlad Drakov

Slap together Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, paint it up in the most shit-awful and miserable stereotypes of Dark Ages Europe, and have the place be run by a man who melds Hitler with Vlad the Impaler and is so bloodthirsty they'd both be disgusted by him. Falkovnia is outright called the biggest shithole in the Demiplane of Dread.

=====Forlorn=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Dreary Scotland with a dash of Brak Man Morn
::[[Darklord]]: Tristen ApBlanc

A vaguely Scottish Celtic themed domain that nobody gives a shit about because there's nothing in it but killer plants, giant bugs, and [[goblyn]]s. 3e tried to fix this by adding a small population of native humans, but the overall domain is still a monster-infested backwoods, so nobody fucking cares. As for its resident asshole, ApBlanc is a [[vampyre]] by day, and a ghost by night, proving once and for all that the Dark Powers do, indeed, have a sense of humor.

=====Hazlan=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Hills, Mountains & Plains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy meets Yellow Peril
::[[Darklord]]: Hazlik

Essentially a tiny sliver of [[Thay]] transplanted into the Demiplane of Dread, where a tiny minutia (the Mulan ethnicity) rules over and brutally represses a far vaster majority (the Rashemani). One of only two places so absolutely shit that [[The Lawgiver]] is actually worshipped here.

=====Invidia=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Lethally Impulsive Stupidity
::[[Darklord]]: Gabrielle Aderre

A land of passionate, hot-blooded and constantly feuding individuals, including mercenary armies, ogres, giants, and wolfweres. The [[Vistani]] are executed on sight here, and as such, its hunter-mercenaries are on the collective shit-list of both Strahd von Zerovich and Ivan Dilisnya.

=====Kartakass=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
::[[Darklord]]: Meistersinger Harkon Lukas

A rural backwoods inhabited by proud, cocky, music-loving foresters who are quite happy with the way things are, thank you. They are totally oblivious to the population of [[wolfwere]]s hiding amongst them.

=====Keening=====
::Cultural Level: None (formerly Chivalric)
::Landscape: Temperate Mountains (Bleached of Life)
::Motif: Endless Grief
::[[Darklord]]: Tristessa the Banshee

A cursed and forsaken realm, with a population consisting solely of its mad, grief-stricken [[banshee]] [[darklord]], her court of half-insane [[undead]] [[fey]], and a village of [[skeleton]]s that constantly mime out the actions of their last day.

=====Lamordia=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Mad Science ala Frankenstein
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Mordenheim & Adam

A stuffy, tempest-lashed domain that prides itself on its scientific acumen and its staunch rationalistic beliefs, totally denying the fantastical nature of the world around them.

=====Mordent=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Plains & Swamps
::Motif: Ghost-Haunted Rural Britain/Scotland
::[[Darklord]]: Lord Wilfred Godefroy

It's basically the setting for every ghost-related Gothic Horror novel ever written. High concentration of both incorporeal undead and mist creatures in a land dotted by small villages sheltering the living. Is also full of ancient ruined manors, decaying coats of arms and dying or dead noble families, furthering that neo-Britain impression by casting it as the decaying remnants of a once-mighty civilization. The false history implies they share a mutual background with Borca, perhaps having originated from the same nameless fantasy world.

=====Necropolis=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Temperate Settled Area
::Motif: City of the Dead
::[[Darklord]]: Death

Once a bustling metropolis in Darkon called Il Aluk, the place was destroyed and turned into a city of sapient undead creatures protected behind a mystical veil that kills and reanimates any living humanoids that enter. This was caused by Azalin achieving an epic-level fuck up with his magic. Generally considered the worst domain in the Core because you can't go in there without being transformed into an [[undead]], which in AD&D came with associated rules that, in the grand tradition of [[Ravenloft]], utterly fucked you over pretty much from the get-go. Its Darklord, "Death", is an uber-powerful ghost with hyper-lethal abilities that was created from a clone of Azalin and which has gone absolutely insane, believing itself to be the literal spirit of death.

=====Nova Vaasa=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Russia under Peter the Great
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Tristen Hiregaard/Malken

A horse-filled steppeland dominated by sweeping grassy plains and crushing urban poverty and squalor, presided over by a mixture of corrupt aristocrats and Lawful Good types who view "law" as more important than "good". This is the ''other'' domain shitty enough to have [[The Lawgiver]] as the state religion, and is such a hellhole that ''Barovians'' look down on its people as backward hicks.

=====Richemulot=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Plains
::Motif: Wererat Land
::[[Darklord]]: Jacqueline Renier

A pseudo-French domain distinguished mostly by being the largest breeding ground of [[wererat]]s in the entire demiplane. The name is literally French for "Rich Mouse", which pretty much gives the game away from the start if you know the language..

=====The Shadow Rift=====
::Cultural Level: Unknowable
::Landscape: Eternally Dark Mysical
::Motif: Dark Faerie Tales
::[[Darklord]]: Gwydion the Shadow Fiend

This is the homeland of the [[Shadow Fey]], and as such no mortals know anything about the place. The court is found at the bottom of a chasm filled with mist, protecting it from the sun, as well as erasing anything stupid enough to try penetrating so deeply into said-mist. In classic Faerie fashion, time works differently here, with a fortnight outside equaling a year ''inside.''

=====Sithicus=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Declining [[Elf]] Kingdom
::[[Darklord]]: Inza Kulchevitch

The only domain in the Core that has a [[demihuman]] majority population, this was formerly the domain of [[Lord Soth]], and is thus loosely based on the [[Dragonlance]] setting. May or may not contain vampire [[kender]].

=====Tepest=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: Grim Faerie Tales Europe meets Salem Witch Trials
::[[Darklord]]: The Sisters Mindefisk

Hands down one of the most primitive and worthless backwaters in the Core, Tepest's trio of [[hag]] [[darklord]]s are practically non-entities in their own land, with the focus instead being on how the ignorant superstitious peasantry are falling increasingly under the sway of a self-righteous inquisition of self-proclaimed [[fey]]-hunters and [[witch]]-burners. The sisters ''do'' fan the flames of said-group so they can harvest the bodies of anyone condemned, but mostly stick to hiding in their cottage.

=====Valachan=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Hills
::Motif: African Savages
::[[Darklord]]: Baron Urik von Kharkov (replaced by Chakuna in 5e)

A rugged wilderness inhabited by dusky-skinned foresters who take pride in their absolute ignorance when it comes to book-learning or anything not related to the practicalities of forest-work, to the point they even look down upon their own priests. Befittingly, this leaves them too ignorant to realize they are being eaten alive by a hidden population of [[nosferatu]] and [[werepanther]]s.

=====Verbrek=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills & Swamps
::Motif: Werewolf Country
::[[Darklord]]: Alfred Timothy

The obligatory [[werewolf]] domain, to contrast the Dracula and Frankenstein ones. Everybody here knows the wilderness (as embodied by the werewolves) is at their door, and live accordingly. This domain was originally called '''Arkandale''' and was run by Alfred's father, Nathan, until he lost the Dark Powers' interest by actually making peace with his lot in life and coming to enjoy being a riverboating casino owner, even if it did mean no longer being able to hunt on the land.

[[Quoth the Raven]] #1 offers an alternative take on the domain where Nathan reclaims it after Alfred's werewolf supremacist cult causes a deadly famine and then civil war amongst the local lycanthropes, which leads to it being renamed Arkandale once more.

===The Seas===
The Core is surrounded by two seas; the Nocturnal Sea and the Sea of Sorrows, which are technically their own unique Clusters that just so happen to adjoin the Core. Because of this, they're put in their own specific sections.

====The Sea of Sorrows====
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Pieter van Riese

This is the Western Sea of the Core, a cold, stormy, mist- (and Mist-)haunted expanse of water populated by various islands, representing the scattered domains of lesser Darklords. Its own "true" Darklord is Captain Pieter van Riese; a [[ghost]] based on the legendary Flying Dutchman who has perhaps the greatest freedom of any Darklord in Ravenloft - he can even leave his ship to go on land and enter other domains! This is because his curse is to ''never'' be able to find his own way, but instead to only be able to take others to where they want to go.

=====Carcharodon Isle=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate Hills
::Motif: <s>Ladyhawke</s> Parted Lovers
::[[Darklord]]: Alison Marjory and Sean Mako

An island cursed with two darklords; a fisherman turned [[wereshark]] and a [[merfolk|mermaid]]-turned-human turned [[seawolf]], whose curses prevent them from ever meeting in their human forms. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====Markovia=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Warm Forests, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: The Island of Dr. Moreau
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Markov

It's literally just the Island of Dr Moreau in D&D. That's it. Originally part of the Core, but was moved out to the Sea of Sorrows as a result of the [[Grand Conjunction]]. Nothing here except the [[Darklord]], his [[Broken One]] minions, and a small temple of priests dedicated to guarding a powerful evil artifact that would be of great interest to the Darklord.

=====Blaustein=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Bluebeard

A small island consisting of a castle and a single village, whose population are fanatically loyal to the blue-bearded master of the castle above.

=====Demise=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Althea

A rocky island made from a mostly cooled volcano, this is basically a glorified dungeon that serves as the prison of the [[medusa]] Althea. Fans have tried to expand this by adding the ghost of her murdered [[maedar]] husband (arguably a much better candidate for the darklord) and her maedar son, who hates both of his crazy parents and wants off this godsforsaken rock.

=====Dominia=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Insanity and Institutional Abuse
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth

A small island that houses the most famous (if not only) insane asylum in all of the Core. A pity it's actually a nest of cerebral vampires, ruled over a crazed psychiatrist determined to push the studies of inflicting madness and terror to their absolute limit.

=====Ghastria=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Stezen D'Polarno

A surprisingly grim and colorless place which grows abundant food that, mysteriously, holds no taste when consumed.

====The Nocturnal Sea====
::[[Darklord]]: Meredoth

The cold and dismal Eastern Sea of the Core, which only emerged from the Mists after the events of the [[Grand Conjunction]], ruled over by Meredoth, an epic-level [[Necromancer]] from Glantri in [[Mystara]]. Although strongly associated with ''Graben Island'', which is where "his" people live, Meredoth can actually travel the Sea at will, and in fact lairs himself on the wintery isle of ''Todstein''. Like the Sea of Sorrows, there are plenty of other domains scattered around the Nocturnal Sea ruled over by their own lords.

=====Isle of the Ravens=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: The Lady of Ravens

A deserted island home only to its darklord, an insane but powerful sorceress from a [[Gormentghast]]ian family, and her legions of raven and [[fey]] servants. Whilst it was first mentioned in official media, appearing in brief summary in the writeup of the Nocturnal Sea in the Domains of Dread revised campaign setting, it was fans who fleshed it out; the Isle of the Ravens first received a writeup in the [[Books of S|Book of Sacrifices]], before later being revisited in [[Quoth the Raven]] #13.

=====L'ile de la Tempete=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Alain Monette

A rocky and treacherous island whose lighthouse serves only to lure sailors to their doom upon its shores.

=====Liffe=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Baron Evensong or Assorted Demilords

A surprisingly large and fertile island, with one of the biggest and most welcoming populations of any island-domains in the Nocturnal Sea. Originally ruled by Baron Evensong, although the fanmade Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer downgraded him to one of a cluster of different super-minor darklords.

=====Locknar Cove=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Cold, eroded hills and thick, old growth forest
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

A quiet, humble island of fisherfolk that lies off the combined shorelines of Darkon and Nova Vassa, close to the isle of Liffe. Hidden at its core like a toad in a stone, the ghost of an avaricious pirate who valued wealth beyond his own life guards a vast treasure hoard. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

===The Clusters===
====The Amber Wastes====
::Motif: Dark Fantasy [[Egypt]]

It's Gothic Horror Egypt in D&D. What more is there to say? Its constituent domains are ''Har'Akir'', ''Sebua'', and ''Pharazia''.

=====Har'Akir=====
::Cultural Level: Bronze Age
::Landscape: Desert and Badlands
::Motif: Mummy Horror Movies
::[[Darklord]]: Anhtepot

''Har'Akir'' is a tiny little village of Egyptian peasants who live next to a tomb housing the [[darklord]] Ankhtepot, a pharaoh who blasphemed against the gods and was condemned to both eternity as a [[mummy]] and to be trapped in obscurity with only a single village of humble peasants to "lord over".

=====Sebua=====
::Cultural Level: Bronze Age Darklord, Stone Age natives
::Landscape: Desert Wasteland
::Motif: Mummy Horror meets Ghost Horror
::[[Darklord]]: Tiyet

''Sebua'' consists of an abandoned Egyptian manor next to an oasis haunted by both a tribe of feral children, who inhabit the nearby ruins of a fallen city, and the [[darklord]] Tiyet, a unique female [[mummy]] who appears as a gorgeous woman... save for her insatiable hunger for human hearts.

=====Pharazia=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape: Deserts, Oases, Rivers
::Motif: Arabian Nights Horror meets Religious Fundamentalism
::[[Darklord]]: Diamabel
''Pharazia'' is a pseudo-Arabian city-state ruled over by its [[darklord]] Diamabel; a moralistic fanatic who led a campaign of genocidal terror in life, when felled by an arrow he arose as the shining [[angel]] he always wanted to become... only to find he transformed into a hideous [[undead]] version of himself at night.

====The Burning Peaks====
::Motif: [[Dark Fantasy]]

A two-domain cluster made up of ''Cavitus'', the realm of [[Vecna]], and ''Tovag'', the realm of [[Kas]].

=====Cavitus=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Negative Energy-Infused Wasteland
::Motif: Cartoonish [[Necromancer]]-Ruled Hellhole
::[[Darklord]]: [[Vecna]]

=====Tovag=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Mountains, Scrub Pine Forests
::Motif: [[Vampire]]s, War Horror
::[[Darklord]]: [[Kas]]

====The Frozen Reaches====
::Motif: Dark Fantasy Russia

It's basically the frozen wintery hell that everybody imagines that Russia is transplanted into D&D. Its constituent domains are ''Sanguinia'' and ''Vorostokov'',

=====Sanguina=====
::Cultural Level: Early Medieval
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Prince Ladislav Mircea

Sanguina is an Early Medieval Russian kingdom ruled over by Prince Ladislav Mircea, a self-centered [[alchemist]] who accidentally transformed himself into a [[mutant]] [[vampire]], possibly a [[Vrykolaka]], that feeds on the Four Humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile) in an effort to save himself from a deadly plague.

=====Vorostokov=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Boyar Gregor Zolnik

Vorostokov is a frigid Dark Ages wasteland of villages and forests trapped in a perpetual winter, ruled over by the [[Loup du Noir]] Boyar Gregor Zolnik.

====The Shadowlands====
::Motif: Medieval Dark Fantasy

Intimately tied to a single world, the Shadowlands are made up of three domains that all tie to one long story of corruption; ''Avonleigh'', ''Nidala'', and ''Shadowborn Manor''.

=====Avonleigh=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Morgoroth the Black

Avonleigh is a monster-haunted forest ruled over by the [[darklord]] Morgoroth the Black, a [[planeswalker]] [[wizard]] who traveled to the homeland of the three domains and ended up destroying the not!Arthurian court there through accident. He is now trapped as a ephemeral shade unless the enchanted mirror that trapped him in this state is reassembled in his former mansion home.

=====Shadowborn Manor=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Ebonbane

Shadowborn Manor is a manor other than Morgoroth's that is the resting place of Ebonbane, a raging fiend trapped in a sword, which is itself trapped in a crystal sarcophagus. Ebonbane is so dangerous that Morgoroth actually uses his magic to assist in keeping the damn thing locked up.

=====Nidala=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Elena Faith-Hold

Nidala is the only actually populated domain, and is ruled over by the self-righteous fanatical fallen [[paladin]] Elena Faith-Hold.

====The Verduous Lands====
::Motif: Tropical Dark Fantasy

The hot and humid hellholes, full of deadly predators and equally deadly plants. For some reason the moon is never seen here.

=====Saragoss=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Draga Saltbiter

Saragoss is an oceanic domain; a vast entangling sargassum patch full of wrecked ships crawling with [[ghoul]]s and cannibal [[pirate]]s above and [[sahuagin]] and [[shark]]s below, with a self-loathing [[wereshark]] [[pirate]] and [[cleric]] of [[Umberlee]] for a [[darklord]].

=====The Wildlands=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape: Tropical Jungles and Swamps
::Motif: Twisted Animal Fables
::[[Darklord]]: King Crocodile

The Wildlands are basically [[grimdark]] Jungle Book; a tropical jungle full of asshole talking animals ruled over by the monstrous King Crocodile.

=====Sri Raji=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Rain forests, hills, and mountains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy India / Sri Lanka
::[[Darklord]]: Maharaja Arijani

''Formerly'' an Island of Terror, Sri Raji is a domain in the Verduous Lands cluster ruled by the [[Rakshasa]] Maharaja Arijani. The Verduous Lands cluster does not have a moon with potentially interesting consequences for lycanthropes having some part of the lunar cycle as their trigger condition. Equally, there should be no tides. Most of the human inhabitants of Sri Raji congregate in three cities, each located surprisingly close to the domain border. A fourth city, Mahakala, is less populated and commonly referred to as "accursed". It's basically Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but with more [[rakshasa]]s, [[beastfolk]] and giant insects.

====Zherisia====
::Motif: Urban Dark Fantasy

Differentiating itself from other clusters, Zherisia is composed of the city domain of ''Paridon'' and ''Timor'', a former Island of Terror now transformed into the sewers underneath Paridon.

=====Paridon=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Urban
::Motif: Gothic-Era Urban Horror
::[[Darklord]]:Sodo

Paridon is a sprawling London-esque city infested with a uniquely powerful strain of [[doppelganger]]s, whose [[darklord]] is a many-cursed psychotic doppelganger named Sodo.

=====Timor=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Underground Tunnels
::Motif: Monsters From Below
::[[Darklord]]: The Marikith Queen

Timor is a dripping hive of tunnels infested by xenomorph expies called Marikith.

====Republica de Neuva Aragona====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Tropical Jungle Islands

A two-domain cluster made up of neighboring isles in a tropical ocean known to its inhabitants as Mar de Lagrimas (the Sea of Tears), both themed after the Spanish colonies of South America. Unusually, the two domains are historically linked; both were connected to the same history involving the "native" colonists rising up against the rule of the motherland of Aragona and fighting for their indepence, which led to the two primary land-masses - the island of '''Resistencia''' and the mainland of '''Maconda''' each gaining a [[Darklord]] out of that initial struggle. It appears in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Resistencia=====
Resistencia is haunted by the [[ghost]] of Don Santiago de Quijada y Alvarez, the leader of the failed army sent by the motherland to quash the independence revolution.

=====Maconda=====
Maconda, on the other hand, is led openly and in darkness by the man who led the independence revolution: the [[wereananconda]] President-General Martin Jose Maconda.

====Colonies of the Holy Empire====
An unusual [[netbook]] cluster in that it's not technically presented ''as'' a cluster. The Colonies of the Holy Empire are a collective of domains that all draw from the same homeworld, a pastiche of Central/South America and its invasion by the Spanish Conquistadors, which appeared in the [[Books of S]] [[netbook]]s. Despite this shared origin, they are not presented as being geographically linked in the usual way of a cluster. ''Mictlan'' appeared in the Book of Shadows, whilst ''Igid Rabi-i'' and ''Cumbre de Oro'' both appeared in the Book of Sacrifices.

=====Mictlan=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Tropical Jungle
::[[Darklord]]: Commander Hernando Mouriros

A pastiche of the [[Aztec]] empire, the invasion of an army from a mysterious Chivalric realm has destabilize the realm and caused it to begin falling apart into civil war. And all the while, the invaders, cursed to never die unless they can conquer all of Mictlan, press on desperately in an attempt to end their long and bloody campaign.

=====Igid Rabi-i=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric, Classical or Dark Ages, depending on region
::[[Darklord]]: Arcapatos Miguel Agustin

A deeply spiritual domain wracked with internal conflict, for its leader is a priest who cares nothing for the realm, and everything for chasing a "holy relic" that evades his every attempt to grasp it.

=====Cumbre de Oro=====
::Cultural Level: Savage (Iron Age ruins, Medieval Avaricios)
::[[Darklord]]: Anibal Coronado

A cursed city of vast riches, a pastiche of El Dorado, haunted by the undead remnants of an explorer's party that gave their lives to find those riches and still refused to stop searching for wealth. This domain is actually a part of the larger Mictlan domain.

===The Islands of Terror===
=====Arlington Farm=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance decayed to Dark Ages
::Landscape: Single large wheat & corn farm
::Motif: Killer Scarecrows
::[[Darklord]]: Henry Arlington

The cursed farm of a farmer so obsessed with the success of his land that he not only killed to acquire it, but he began performing blood rites to ensure its success, murdering people and hiding their bodies in his scarecrows. Eventually, his cursed creations turned on him and turned him into one of them. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Bluetspur=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Age
::Landscape: Temperate hills, plains, and mountains
::Motif: [[Yog-Sothothery]]
::[[Darklord]]: The [[Illithid]] God-Brain

Meaning "Blood Trail" in German, it's a desolate wasteland with nightly, violent electrical storms on the surface. Beneath the surface lie the maddening and sprawling cities of illithids and their tortured and experimented slaves. This is also the home of the infamous Vampiric Mind Flayers, a creature that is technically indestructible in AD&D.

=====Callista=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Flooded Islets
::Motif: Gothic Vienna
::[[Darklord]]: Rafe Ungard

A once large island that has been reduced to tiny islets by intense flooding, peopled with a passionately chivalric (in the sense of "women are sacred and must be protected") people who claim to be the ''true'' [[Vistani]], ignorant of the fact that they are actually the cursed reincarnations of the true Vistani seen elsewhere in the Misty Realms. Because only 20% of their children are girls, they are overwhelmingly, patronizingly chivalric, and will sooner die than hurt women. The realm is also home to a large population of [[Paka]], who believe it to be a defiled holy site and hate the Callistans passionately. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Davion=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Shifts
::Motif: Dueling Psyches
::[[Darklord]]: Davion the Mad

A twisting realm that was created when a miscast Wish spell merged the mindscapes of the wizard Davion and his three hirelings - the male [[mage]] Ausgustus, the male [[fighter]] Boromar, and the female [[cleric]] of [[Loviatar]] Narana - into a single unit, leaving them struggling for dominion.

=====The Eternal Torture=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Decaying Sailing Ship
::Motif: [[Ghoul]] Ship
::[[Darklord]]: Miles Havelocke

The cursed ship of Miles Havelocke, a mutineer who led his crew to commit cannibalism upon the loyal members of the crew. Now a crew of [[ghast]]s, they endlessly search for land, attacking and feeding upon any unlucky ships they encounter as their passage leads them to the Nocturnal Sea, the Sea of Sorrows, and the oceans off all other domains, but never to the land they desperately wish to reach. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Farelle=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Woodlands
::Motif: Acceptance of Self
::[[Darklord]]: Jark Karn, The Jackal Who Would Not Be A Coward

An island splinter of the Wildlands, inhabited by a burgeoning population who are genuinely warm, welcoming and thriving. A pity that this is the manifestation of the darklord's curse. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====G'Henna=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Cold and temperate hills, plains, mountains, and deserts
::Motif: Corrupt [[Theocracy]]
::[[Darklord]]: Yagno Petrovna

Here a starving population works the fields to produce food to be sacrificed for the god [[Zhakata]]. Unfortunately the god doesn't exist and priests of the god eat the offerings, while the farmers starve themselves waiting for a god that will never come.

=====The House of Lament=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Mansion
::Motif: Haunted/Evil House
::[[Darklord]]: The House Itself

The House of Lament is a cursed structure that is simultaneous domain and darklord; a haunted structure that demands the sacrifice of human souls in an effort to quell its inescapable loneliness.

=====I'Cath=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Temperate Forest
::Motif: [[Oriental Adventures|Chinese Ghost Stories]]
::[[Darklord]]: Tsien Chiang

A tiny Island of Terror inhabited only by its Darklord and her four daughters - the three evil daughters Hate, Spite and Scream, all of whom are variant Con-tinh (evil spirit women), and the benevolent, tormented good daughter Nightingale. Her domain is similar to Forlorn in that it's basically a glorified dungeon, with literally nothing to do except show up and defeat the Darklord or die trying, except it's [[Oriental Adventures|Chinese]], not Scottish. Tsien Chiang is a misandrist [[necromancer]] from [[Kara-tur]], based on an ''incredibly'' minor character from the [[Forgotten Realms]] lore. She can also transform into an evil [[Treant]].

=====Immerabt=====
::Cultural Level: Late Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate & Cold Plains, Mountains and Aquatic
::Motif: When Death Becomes Relief
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Dorothy Hemphyll

An incredibly advanced domain whose scientific prowess can challenge that of Lamordia's, especially in medical sciences. It bulges with life to the point of being overrun with it, and yet death is a mercy that all too few can find, especially under the watchful eye of the Healer's Guild. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Incitatus=====
::Cultural Level: Classical reduced to Stone Age
::Landscape: Desolate, Lifeless City and rural surroundings
::Motif: Scientific Hubris Brings Apocalypse
::[[Darklord]]: Ahasveros

The lifeless remains of what was once a great scientific civilization, one that destroyed itself attempting to harness the power of the sea to annihilate an enemy nation with an artificially created tidal wave. Now, all that remains is the reclusive ghostly remains of the scientist who created that tidal wave, and destroyed his own people with it. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Kalidnay=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Desert
::Motif: [[Dark Sun|Athas]]
::[[Darklord]]: Thakok-An

The city and lands surrounding Kalidnay in Athas, which are nothing but ruins within [[Dark Sun]]'s setting proper. Its inhabitants actually prefer the Demiplane of Dread to actually living in Athas. Just let that sink in.

=====Karss=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Massive Prison in the middle of nowhere
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Warden Jonar Tamh

Formerly the Great Prison of the [[Harmonium]], an experiment in reformation-focused incarceration launched by the Hardheads on the faction's homeworld of Ortho, the warden's descent into cruelty and draconian punishments in defiance of the experiment's focus led to its being ripped from Ortho and stranded in the Mists. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====Kislova=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Mountainous Grasslands
::Motif: Futility of Power Behind the Throne
::[[Darklord]]: Baroness Ilsabet Obour

A domain adapted from the Ravenloft novel "Baroness of Blood", ruled over by a malevolent [[alchemist]] turned pain-eating monster. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====The Lost Wizard's Tower=====
::Cultural Level: Savage, vestiges of Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forest & Hills
::Motif: Obsessive Love
::[[Darklord]]: [[Jinx]]

Once, there was a cat; a [[familiar]] to a powerful [[alchemist]] and [[transmuter]] named Margaret Landsdale. Then she grew overbold with her experiments and tested a formula on her familiar in order to enhance his intelligence. It worked all too well; now, Jinx could think as well as any human... and get jealous. That jealousy led to her death, and now it leads to the death of any arcane spellcaster whom Jinx tries to take as her replacement. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Miseria=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temperate hills, forests, caves
::Motif: Ghostly Hauntings
::[[Darklord]]: Cassandre Desesprits

A rugged and inhospitable land whose people struggle to survive and put food on the tables, all whilst dealing with the vast legions of ghosts that haunt the realm. And nobody suspects that a humble barmaid with a heart full of spite and selfishness is the ultimate cause for their damnation. This netbook canon domain debuted in the 2001 issue of the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]].

=====The Nightmare Lands=====
::Cultural Level: None
::Landscape: Ever-Changing
::Motif: Nightmares
::[[Darklord]]: The Nightmare Man and his Nightmare Court

A strange realm that exists halfway between the Demiplane of Dread and the [[Plane of Dreams]], ruled over by Darklord-like figures who live to visit mortals with nightmares and ultimately draw them into complete insanity.

=====The Northlands=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric declined to Medieval, Early Medieval declined to Dark Ages
::Landscape: Temperate forests, hills, mountains, plains, swamps
::Motif: [[Vikings]]
::[[Darklord]]: Jarl Gravstein Hansen

A land patterned after the ancient Norse lands, where one Jarl's selfishness is causing the decline of everything his people had worked for. This netbook canon domain debuted in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002, and was revisited in its 2003 issue.

=====Nosos=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: Polluted Hellscape
::Motif: Rampant Pollution, Capitalism Gone Wrong
::[[Darklord]]: Malus Sceleris

A hellish polluted pit of a domain, where disease runs rampant amidst mountains of filth and sewerage in a sky clouded with fumes, smoke and gas.

=====Nzari=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age, Renaissance in Mr. Klein's camp
::Landscape: Tropical Rainforest
::Motif: Darkest Africa
::[[Darklord]]: Gatwe and Mr. Klein.

A domain inspired by the Darkest Africa tropes in general and the novel Heart of Darkness in particular. A land of cannibalistic natives, jungle monsters, and a brutal overlord who thinks of himself as the civilizing force, begging the question: "who is the real savage?" This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2003.

=====Odiare=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate settled area
::Motif: Twisted Pinocchio
::[[Darklord]]: Maligno

Island from [[Masque of the Red Death|Gothic Earth's]] Italy, populated by children and the [[carrionette]]s who killed the adults that used to live here. Naturally, all the kiddos are quite concerned about what'll happen when they're old enough to be labeled an adult.

=====Olympus=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Temeprate Forest & Hills, Cold Mountains, Warm Aquatic
::Motif: Greek Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Hercules

A pastiche of mythological Greece, ruled over by a pantheon of Living Gods - fallen heroes who have taken the identities of the Greek Deities as their own. And the once shining hope against those cruel, petty deities is in fact the worst of them all. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====The Raging Tears=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Single Rotting Ship
::Motif: Ghost Ship
::[[Darklord]]: Urdogen "The Red"

The cursed vessel of a long-forgotten pirate from [[Forgotten Realms|Faerun]], whose restless soul is condemned to wander the seas forever and never attain the power he once knew as the feared pirate king of the Inner Sea of Faerun. Whilst the ghost ship can be found in any sea in the Demiplane, or even sometimes beyond, its physical remains lie in the Sea of Sorrows, and must be found if one would put Urdogen to his long-cheated fate. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====Rokushima Táiyoo=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages
::Landscape: Archipelago with forests, hills, and mountains
::Motif: Dark Fantasy Japan
::[[Darklord]]: Haki Shinpi

Four islands surrounded by a poisonous salt water ocean. Each island's ruler hates the others, whilst the Darklord (their father) is forced to watch as they tear apart his dreams of unity and peace. It's also the home of the [[Akikage]] (ghost ninjas), [[Hebi-no-Onna]]s (snake women), and [[Kizoku]] (vampiric womanizers). Despite a Dark Ages cultural level, it's interested in the gunpowder weapons of Dementlieu and Darkon. Fun fact: the ''Anesthesia'' spell is popular here, as its use allows the dying to face death with a clear mind, and thus die with honor.

Strangely, the capitals of the four warring brothers have the Japanese names of various real world countries: Beikoku (米国, United States of America), Eikoku (英国, England), Chuugoka (corruption of 中国, China), and Roshiya (Literally just Russia said funny). As long as it sounds Japanese! Sadly, that's more than can be said for the Dark Lord's name...

=====Romagna=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Mild Plains and Forests
::Motif: Eternal Love
::[[Darklord]]: Serenissa D'Aubliet

A peaceful and gentle agricultural domain that seems free of the darkness of other, grimmer realms. But its shadows still linger, in the form of a spectral darklord who, whilst powerless to affect the natives, has no such restrictions against preying on visitors. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====Saarkaath=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Temperate Mountains, Forest
::Motif: Blood Purity
::[[Darklord]]: Hakaan na Uruk

A realm of [[half-orc]]s turned inwards into a brutal and pointless butchery, where the inhabitants try to claim "purity" of either [[human]] or [[orc]]ish heritage despite all being mixed race. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====San Bartolome=====
::Cultural Level: Middle Ages
::Landscape: Warm, Rugged, Mountainous
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Isabel de Sargas

A theocratic tropical paradise that is obsessed with the need to attain spiritual purification through righteous behavior and serial reincarnation. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sacrifices.

=====Scaena=====
::Cultural Level: Renaissance
::Landscape: The inside of a theater
::Motif: Mad Artistry
::[[Darklord]]: Lemot Sediam Juste

The personal theatre of Lemot Sediam Juste, who went insane and murdered his entire cast of actors, then burned down the theatre with himself in it, all because he couldn't accept that he was only good at writing comedies and he was a fucking terrible author of tragedies. Now it wanders the Misty Realms, luring in victims to serve as cast and audience alike, all ultimately to meet destruction.

=====Seradan=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Temeprate Forests, Hills
::Motif: [[Stupid Nuetral]]
::[[Darklord]]: Geren Horstadt

A domain from which all of the metaphorical life has been sapped; a dull and colorless place of dull and colorless people, its inhabitants almostly aggressively average, sluggish and dreamy in their actions. All the better to torment its darklord. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Secrets.

=====Souragne=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Tropical Swamps
::Motif: Southern Gothic
::[[Darklord]]: Anton Misroi

It's basically the Ravenloft version of the Antebellum South as a whole and New Orleans in particular.

=====Staunton Bluffs=====
::Cultural Level: Middle Ages
::Landscape: Cold Prairies and Forests
::Motif: Cowardice and treachery
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Torrence Bleysmith

A small realm of prairies, overseen by the mad, bitter ghost of the man who caused the downfall of the people who once dwelled here.

=====Stonewall=====
::Cultural Level: Civalric
::Landscape: Temperate Forests & Mountains
::Motif: Puritan Intolerance
::[[Darklord]]: Bethany Stone

Once a small town near Salem, Massachusetts in the real world - or at least its Gothic Earth analogue, Stonewall has been ripped from its moorings and cast into the myths thanks to the machinations of its darklord; a woman so self-righteous and hateful that she killed her own daughter to carry on her moral crusade. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Tower of the Phantom Lover=====
::Cultural Level: NA
::Landscape: Tower over underground labyrinth
::Motif: Sexual Predation
::[[Darklord]]: The Phantom Lover

The mysterious hideaway of the malevolent spirit known as the Phantom Lover, who seeks to seduce and then slaughter women pining for lost love.

=====Tsuu-y-Teke=====
::Cultural Level: Stone Age
::Landscape: Warm Deserts, Hills & Mountains
::Motif: Desert Country Native American Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Heresa Heri, The Vulture King

A domain inspired by the myths of desert-dwelling Native American cultures. A realm of seemingly eternal day, haunted by a malevolent vulture-spirit who once tried to steal all the lights of day and night for himself. Netbook canon. First appeared in the [[Books of S|Book of Shadows]] for 2e, then was updated to 3e in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Vechor=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Warm Forests, Hills & Swamps
::Motif: Insanity Made Real
::[[Darklord]]: Easan the Mad

A vaguely India-esque domain ruled over by an insane [[elf]] [[wizard]] who has the power to reshape the surroundings based on his current mad whim.

=====Vin'Ejal=====
::Cultural Level: Medieval
::Landscape: Arctic Coastal Mountain
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Benada Nameless

A frigid island that drifts in an icy sea, whose people struggle to survive in the face of the eternal winter and the packs of [[seawolf|seawolves]] haunting their rich seas, haunted by a most unusual darklord; a [[yuan-ti]]-blooded [[weresnake]]! Netbook canon domain from the Book of Souls.

=====Vulnara=====
::Cultural Level: Late Chivalric to Renaissance
::Landscape: Temperate Forests, Hills, Mountains
::Motif: All-Consuming Bitterness
::[[Darklord]]: Kasselheim Blightlyng

A realm of unusually somber and technology-focused [[gnome]]s and [[svirfneblin]], shaped by the prejudices of a bitter, self-loathing, humor-hating gnomish [[vampire]] cursed with failing senses and growing madness. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

=====Vultharesk=====
::Cultural Level: Dark Ages, Renaissance on the Godwyn Estate
::Landscape: Cold Mountains
::Motif: Moral Guardianship
::[[Darklord]]: Sir Trevor Godwyn, "The Mirror Man"

A strict, almost puritanical domain obsessed with the necessities of survival and averse to all things that are not "right" or "proper". But this attitude is not born out of morals or self-righteousness, but fear, for they are haunted by an ever-present spirit who will punish those that fails to live up to his strict sense of decency. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Shadows.

=====Wayward on the Bone Sands=====
::Cultural Level: Chivalric
::Landscape: Barren Desert
::Motif: Cannibalism, Killer Kids
::[[Darklord]]: Caleb Wicks

A cursed desert village of former humans turned into [[quevari]] after being seduced into genocide against (and cannibalism of) their [[gnome]] neighbors by the malicious child cannibal Caleb Wicks. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Secrets.

=====Whal=====
::Cultural Level: Renaisssance
::Landscape: Cold Forested Hills
::Motif: Moby Dick
::[[Darklord]]: Captain Jacobi Robertsonn

A sturdy, practical domain dedicated to the hunting of fish, seals and whales... no mean feat when your land is home to the demiplane's largest congregation of [[wereorca]]s. Netbook canon domain from the Book of Sorrows.

=====The Winding Road=====
::Cultural Level: Nonexistent
::Landscape: Random road
::Motif: Random Encounter
::[[Darklord]]: The Headless Horseman

Hands down one of the worst Domains in classical Ravenloft, the Winding Road is a glorified random encounter in which the party is suddenly attacked by the Headless Horseman, a powerful [[undead]] warrior mounted on horseback. Who is he? Well, there's three stories about where he came from. The first one is that he was an innocent man executed by Drakov's men. The second one is that he was a man who chopped off his own head rather than be killed by one of Strahd's men. And the third is that he was a bard who failed to entertain Ivana Boritsi as she bathed, so she chopped off his head and mixed his blood into her bathwater. If you think that none of those sound like a Darklord's backstory, you're not wrong. Oh, and you also have to fight the undead severed heads that precede and then follow the Horseman's run-by attack, which includes several [[medusa]] heads.

=====Yatehcaa=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Mountains, High Desert
::Motif: Native American Mythology
::[[Darklord]]: Coyote

A domain based on certain Native American myths, where the people live simple, happy lives, whilst trying to avoid the attentions of the malicious trickster and fallen hero-deity Coyote. This netbook canon domain can be found in the [[Undead Sea Scrolls]] 2002.

==Cyre?==
In [[Eberron]], the nation of Cyre was destroyed in the Day of Mourning, leaving only the [[Mournland]] behind. That Cyre became a Demiplane of Dread is perhaps the most common theory on the origin of the Mournland within the fandom, as it checks all the boxes for explanations.
*The Mournland stops at Cyre’s artificial, political, borders and thus had to be caused by some intelligent actor. The Dark Powers certainly count. It also explains why it stops so exactly at the water that the docks were left behind.
*The Mournland’s border is a wall of “dead-gray mist”. The link is obvious. In 4th Edition, this dead-gray mist supernaturally drains people of hope.
*The Forge of War states that Dannel ir'Wynarn insistence that the crown of Galifar belonged to her was the only thing keeping the Last War going, making her prime Darklord material.
*Dark Sun material describes Kalidnay as having been destroyed by "unknown disaster" that left it only "a jumble of ruins". The ruins in the Mournland are described being "moved", "rearranged", "turned 90 degrees", or "found miles from where war-era maps say they should be", which certainly can be described as a "jumble". The one adventure that travels to the ruined city (DSM2) mentions several structures remain intact, and many appear to be ruins purely because they're centuries old, which fits the multiple Mournland adventures with surviving structures, and several people seem to have died suddenly in a way that their body was intact. (While some of the Mournland's signature features are absent, all outside descriptions of Kalidnay are centuries after the fact while all descriptions of the Mournland are 0-4 years after its creation.)

None of this will ever be confirmed, and it’s unlikely to be anti-confirmed, as the truth of the Mourning is one of Eberron’s mysteries that exists to have no answer but what the [[Dungeon Master]] gives them. The setting's creator has however concurred it's a good option if one wanted some bit of Eberron in Ravenloft.

The theory received a bit of a nod in 5th edition with the reveal of a new Domain of Dread that is a fragment of Cyre that was taken by the mists on the Day of Mourning.

==4th Edition: Islands of Terror==
In the [[World Axis]], the idea of the Demiplane of Dread being its own independent universe was basically dropped. The idea, however, remained in the form of the ''Domains of Dread''; regions in the [[Shadowfell]] created in response to great evils in the Material World, essentially mimicking the Islands of Terror format of the Demiplane, but with one major difference: these Domains are still part of the Shadowfell as a whole. As a result, if you can find the rite or secret or whatever it is that grants you passage, then you can flee the Domain through its misty veil and into the wider Shadowfell... which isn't necessarily that much of an improvement, but hey.

The idea of the Core is complete absent in 4th edition. Perhaps, if [[Ravenloft]] had been revived in this setting, the Core would have instead become more of a cursed but otherwise normal world, similar to and yet separate from the Domains of Dread seen in the Shadowfell. We'll never know.

The 4e Domains of Dread consist of the following:

=====Sunderheart=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Half-ruined city on a cliff's edge at the edge of a swampy river dela
::Motif: Diabolist Grand Guignol
::[[Darklord]]: Ivania Dreygu and Vorno "The Ghoul" Kahnebor

Originally the [[Bael Turath]] city of Harrack Unarth, Sunderheart's doom came when it came under the control of the lovers Ivania Dreygu and Vorno Kahnebor, the [[Nentir Vale]] version of Romeo and Juliet... if Romeo and Juliet were debauched hedonistic [[tiefling]]s who engaged in rape, murder and cannibalism and who massacred their entire families so they could be together. Eventually, Vorno became so vile that even Ivania grew sick of him, so she murdered him by feeding him a servant girl whom she had fed with a deadly poison. Then she woke up in Sunderheart with her [[ghoul]]ified [[undead]] lover fused to her back like a monstrous parasitic twin. Now she rules by day over the half of the city still inhabited by the living, and Vorno the Ghoul rules over the undead-haunted ruins at night.

=====Graefmotte=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Dense Pine Forest, Mountains
::Motif: Starvation
::[[Darklord]]: Lord Durven Graef

When the [[Yeenoghu]]-worshipping hordes of the White Ruin threatened the empire of Nerath in the [[Nentir Vale]], Lord Graef was the ruler of a minor frontier province who had already lost two of his three children. Desperate to preserve his family legacy, he was determined that his final son, Geoffery Graef, would not answer King Elidyr's call to take up arms against the horde. When his son disagreed, they fought, and Lord Graef accidentally killed his son by causing him to fall and fatally strike his head. Which was when the [[gnoll]] warbands fell upon Graefmotte. Lord Graef led the fighting over the night, and was near-mortally wounded; disemboweled and with an arm bitten off, nobody expected him to cling to life for a day and a night... never mind for his wounds to fully heal. Ever since then, Graefmotte has been a land cursed, where its people face a slow, withering death by starvation, or a quick, bloody one at the jaws of the maddened gnolls and starvation-spawned [[ghoul]]s that haunt the ever-shifting forest.

=====Monadhan=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: Tropical Rainforest
::Motif: Treachery
::[[Darklord]]: Arantor

During the war between [[Bael Turath]] and [[Arkhosia]], the [[Metallic Dragon#Silver Dragon|Silver Dragon]] Arantor and his daughter mrissa were called upon to destroy a remote Turathi military outpost, almost hidden within thick tropical rainforest, whose isolation and surroundings made it virtually unreachable by ground-based forces. But after they hit their target, they realized that their intel had been faulty; this was no military camp, it was a refugee center for Turathi civilians! Father and daughter quarreled over what to do, with Imrissa wanting to return to Arkhosia and take responsibility for their crimes, whilst the glory-hound Arantor insisted they conceal it and protect their reputations. The argument grew so heated that Arantor slew his daughter, and then, stricken by guilt, he massacred the survivors of his first attack before becoming a plague upon the Turathi until his death. Which was when he awoke as a [[dracolich]] in a cavern deep below a twisted reflection of Monadhan, which has now become a gathering point for traitors. The greater the betrayal, and the more pathetic the reason, the more likely the perpetrator is to find a place within Monadhan - whether by being swallowed by the Mists, or by awakening there alive and whole after dying for their misdeeds. As a result, Monadhan is now an oubliette for treacherous scum from across time and space.

=====The Endless Road=====
::Cultural Level: Classical
::Landscape: An endless road winding through forests, hills and plains
::Motif: You can't escape your sins
::[[Darklord]]: Eli van Hassen

The tiny little roadside town of Tranquility was a peaceful place, until the day a four-headed [[hydra]] lurched from the fens and began plaguing the people. When a wandering [[adventurer]] known only as "The Horseman" arrived and slew the beast, the people celebrated. But the town's ruler, Eli van Hassen, a man forever plagued by resentment and inferiority over his provincial abode, resented the hero's fame. He forced his daughter to slander the man, accusing him of rape, and whipped the people of Tranquility into a frenzied mob who executed their savior despite his former protests. Now Eli and his daughter inhabit a fortified mansion that sits on the side of a great road, which stretches on to infinity; unless the Road decides to let you go, which it can do to anywhere in the [[Multiverse]], you can walk forever and never leave. Of course, that risks attack by the undead remains of the Headless Horseman, who wants revenge on the van Hassens, but will happily settle for anyone else he can get his hands on.

=====Timbergorge=====
::Cultural Level: Iron Age
::Landscape: Dense confider forest
::Motif: Nature's Savagery
::[[Darklord]]: Silvermaw

When a naive [[treant]] allowed [[human]]s to settle in the planeshifting forest that was an [[archfey]]'s garden under his care, he was horrified when they began to create a fire to keep them warm as they slept. But when he attacked in an effort to quench the flames, he burned himself and then set the forest ablaze, leaving it to burn as he focused on slaying the human interlopers. For this, his master cut the garden away and banished it to the [[Shadowfell]]. Here, the tribal humans have become a pack of werewolves, endlessly hunting and being hunted by the mad, wounded treant, who has coated his mouth with molten silver so that he may better rend and bite his foes; hence his name "Silvermaw".

==5th Edition: The Alternate Continuity==
In February 2021, it was announced across the internet that the Demiplane of Dread would at last make an official return as a D&D setting for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] in the form of [[Van Richten's Guide]] to [[Ravenloft]]. But it also openly announced that the 30 domains of dread that would be debuting in the book would include a mixture of brand new domains, classic domains, and revamped/reimagined takes on old domains - something that immediately began raising hackles amongst the Ravenloft fandom, who tend towards the [[grognard]]ier side of the fence. Why did they do this? Was it because the last version of Ravenloft-as-setting was done by [[White Wolf]] and there were legal entanglements preventing [[Wizards of the Coast]] from reusing their inventions? Was it because a lot of Ravenloft classic lore was actually kind of stupid and in desperate need of revamping? Was it because of [[SJW]]s? (probably a little considering some of the weirder changes made) Some combination thereof? The world may never know.

Either way, the 5e version of the Demiplane of Dread thusly has its own unique take on the different Domains, which this section will try to break down for comparison's sake.

5th edition no longer has the Core although a few Clusters still exist, but are now treated as single domains, and also changes the rules for traveling between domains. If the borders of a domain are not closed, entering the mists on the borders only takes you to another domain if you get a lucky roll, and usually you will end up back in the domain where you started or just wander the mists going nowhere. And even if you do get lucky it is up to the DM to decide where to drop you. You can choose what domain you want to go to and bypass this roll by carrying a mist talisman, which is an item related in some way to that domain or at least that domain's theme, and each domain has a few possible items you can use as a talisman for it. If you have the Mist Walker dark gift, you can travel to any domain that you know the name of without a talisman, but at the cost of not being able to stay in one place for too long.

===Detailed Domains===
These domains have received descriptions a few pages long.

=====Barovia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

It's literally just Barovia as seen in [[Curse of Strahd]]. The only major change is that now the Dark Powers have started to get creative and may have Tatyana reincarnate as someone unexpected to mess with Strahd.

=====Bluetspur 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Utterly alien
::Motif: Alien Horror, amnesia
::[[Darklord]]: The God-Brain

Aside from some slight tweaks to the backstory of the God-Brain and a shift in focus to more of an "alien abductions/unspeakable alien experiments" motif, Bluetspur is basically unchanged.

=====Borca 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Outside of the changes to the [[Darklord]]s, there's nothing new here.

=====[[The Carnival]] 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

No longer a wandering point of light, [[The Carnival]] is now a free-floating island of terror, with the role of [[Darklord]] being shared between Isolde and Nepenthe, a cursed sword she carries. The backstory has also been changed extensively, involving a counterpart to the Carnival run by [[shadar-kai]]. The Carnival is also haunted by the ''Litwick Market'', a black market of malicious fey with a grudge against the Carnival who invariably show up once the Carnival settles down and start making trouble. Also, the Twisting is no longer a thing.

=====Darkon 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: The end of the world
::[[Darklord]]: Azalin Rex, currently MIA

The first "continuation" domain, Azalin went missing during an event called the Hour of Ascension and now Darkon is falling apart, slowly being dissolved by the Mists. The domain has become split into four islands. During the day the mists can be crossed as normal, but during the night anything covered by the mists disappears and the mists swallow a little bit more of the land in tiny steps or in huge floods. As was the case during the original [[Grim Harvest|Shrouded Years]], a number of demilords are trying and failing to hold it together. Collectively known as The Inheritors, they consist of the vampire Alcio Metus (sister to the late Baron Metus), Cardinna Artazas and the Necrichor of Darcalus Rex, and Madame Talisveri Eris. The only clue about where Azalin went is a strange glowing object called the King's Tear which appeared floating over Darkon at the same time that he vanished.

=====Dementlieu 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Masquerade and imposter syndrome
::[[Darklord]]: Saidra d'Honaire

Completely rewritten, Dementlieu is now an impoverished city where everybody tries desperately to pretend they are richer and more important than they actually are or else lose their clout, and avoid getting exposed as frauds lest they be disintegrated by its new [[Darklord]]; Saidra d'Honaire. Also has a Masque of the Red Death thing going on, making it a bit like Sanguinia.

=====Falkovnia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Zombie Apocalypse
::[[Darklord]]: Vladeska Drakov

Completely rewritten, Falkovnia is no longer the "war horror" domain, but instead a zombie apocalypse domain, where new [[Darklord]] Vladeska Drakov struggles to keep the living alive in the face of monthly sieges by massive armies of the [[Walking Dead]]. Maybe they didn't want [[/pol/]] fanboying the original Vlad?

=====Har'Akir 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Completely rewritten, Har'Akir is now a sprawling, heavily populated land where [[necrocracy|the living bow to a mummified aristocracy]] and Ankhtepot actually wishes for death.

=====Haz'lan 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Wild magic, environmental destruction, magic-based classism
::[[Darklord]]: Hazlik

This retconned version of the domain has dropped the Mulans vs. Rashemani racism of the past and is now being devastated by a series of arcane apocalypses. [[Darklord]] Hazlik now suffers a combination of his old curse and Azalin's curse.

=====I'Cath 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Denial of reality
::[[Darklord]]: Tsien Chiang

Completely rewritten, I'Cath has gone from a glorified [[Oriental Adventures]] [[dungeon]] to a crumbling city where the population is largely trapped in an eternal slumber, forced to constantly work at building and rebuilding a dream-version of I'Cath at the behest of [[Darklord]] Tsien Chiang, who can never be satisfied with what she has. When the inhabitants wake, they must scavenge for food in a city constantly being rebuilt by Tsien Chian's armies of [[Jiangshi]], who will not harm a sleeper, but will happily tear an awake mortal limb from limb.

=====Kalakeri=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: War-torn nation, faction mechanics
::[[Darklord]]: Ramya Vasavadan

New domain, although it's intended to take the place of the old domain of Sri Raji, which is mentioned as an alternative name for it. This India-themed domain is locked in an eternal civil war between its [[Darklord]], Ramya Vasavadan, and her two [[fiend]]ish siblings; Arijani the [[Rakshasa]] and Reeva the [[Arcanaloth]].

=====Kartakass 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Show business, predatory business practices, werewolves
::[[Darklord]]: Harkon Lukas

Largely unchanged, save for the revisions to [[Darklord|Harkon Lukas']] story and the replacement of [[wolfwere]]s with [[Loup-garou]].

=====Lamordia 5e=====
::Cultural Level: Steampunk
::Landscape: Arctic
::Motif: Mad science, biting cold, implicit kaiju
::[[Darklord]]: Viktra Mordenheim

Basically unchanged, save for a new emphasis on an arctic climate and the tweaks to its [[Darklord]], replacing Viktor Mordenheim and Adam with Viktra Mordenheim and Elise. The darklord curse has been given a twist, too: Viktra succeeded where Victor would perpetually fail-- but she cannot duplicate her success and the living (golem-like) Elise shuns her and hides in the wilderness. Also, the whalers operating out of Ludendorf may or may not be hunting creatures [[Kraken|more fearsome than actual whales]], and it's heavily implied that there may be a radioactive kaiju hibernating under the mountain range not-so-subtly named "The Sleeping Beast".

=====Mordent 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Ghosts and haunted houses
::[[Darklord]]:

The only change here is to [[Darklord|Wilfred Godefroy's]] curse and backstory, which now involves the famous Alchemist's Apparatus first introduced to [[Ravenloft]] lore in [[I10: Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill]].

=====Richemulot 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Pandemic, wererats
::[[Darklord]]: Jacqueline Renier

Retconned into a plague-stricken nation barely avoiding crumbling into total ruination through the machinations of [[Darklord|Jacqueline Renier]], who's also responsible for the plagues in the first place as she's a one-percenter who despises the middle-class and people who aren't wererats.

=====Tepest 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Wickerman/Midsommar type of stories
::[[Darklord]]: Lorinda Mindefisk

Sitting somewhere between continuation and retcon, Tepest has lost its anti-fey inquisition and is now focused on its [[Darklord]]; Lorinda Mindefisk, who imprisoned her sisters in a cauldron because they refused to let her have a child.

=====Valachan 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Jungle
::Motif: The deadliest game
::[[Darklord]]: Chakuna

Similarly to Tepest, Valachan is supposed to be a continuation of its former self, although there's a lot of retcons to the lore. Since [[Darklord|Baron Urik von Kharkov]] was slain by Chakuna, the jungles have turned hungry, rendering the realm a land where everything is out for blood and those appetites are barely kept in check by regular ceremonial blood sacrifices known as the Trial of Hearts.

===Summarized Domains===
These domains only received a short block of text about them. Several of them are completely new domains and so are intended to just be ideas for Dungeon Masters to build on.

=====Cyre 1313, The Mourning Rail=====
::Cultural Level: Dungeonpunk
::Landscape: A magical train traveling through the Mists
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: The Last Passenger

The first ever [[Eberron]] Domain of Dread. On the day that Cyre was destroyed by the Mourning, a train was about to carry a bunch of refugees who saw the disaster coming out of Cyre, but the train's departure was delayed by a mysterious VIP who threw hundreds of the train's passengers out to make room for their self and their retinue and to be sure nobody on the train would learn their identity, and so the train departed too late. The train was taken into the mists when the Mourning hit where it became a mobile domain constantly running from the Mourning which the passengers think is still chasing them. The passengers still haven't noticed that the Mourning already killed them.

=====Forlorn 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====Ghastria 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====G'henna 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for a few details about its Darklord's history.

=====Invidia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Rewritten; Gabrielle Aderre is now the [[Darklord]], constantly dabbling in black magic and conjuring all manner of outsiders to try and ensure that her beloved (and implicitly possessed) son Malocchio will have the best of futures.

=====Keening 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Now has a living population who live in terror of its [[banshee]] [[Darklord]]. They fear the Darklord so much that they have actually destroyed their own sense of hearing to protect themselves.

=====Klorr=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Surreal environment
::Motif: Impending Doom
::[[Darklord]]: Klorr

New domain mentioned in brief, a series of shattered islands floating through a misty netherworld, swirling around a blazing giant eye, where one island is obliterated every hour only for another to take its place.

=====Markovia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Tropical island
::Motif: Flowers for Algernon syndrome, furries
::[[Darklord]]: Dr. Frantisek Markov

Rewritten into a mixture of Dr. Moreau and Dr. Jekyll.

=====The Nightmare Lands 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Nightmares
::[[Darklord]]: The Nightmare Court

Largely unchanged, save for the new origin of the Nightmare Court as multiple personas birthed from the mind of a powerful but monstrous [[psion]]icist who tries to run from the crimes of her past and deny that they ever existed.

=====Niranjan=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: Island monastery
::Motif: [[Path of Inspiration]]
::[[Darklord]]: Sarthak

New domain mentioned in brief, tied to Kalakeri, ruled over by a corrupted [[Metallic Dragon|Brass Dragon]] who poses as a ''sadhu'' to lure victims into sacrificing their worldly goods for his hoard before he consumes their souls and replaces it with an obedient shadow.

=====Nova Vaasa 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]: Myar Hiregaard

Rewritten; now less Russian and more Mongolian, with a female [[Darklord]] named Myar Hiregaard who united the warring tribes of her homelands, only to turn them against each other once more when she grew bored with peacetime.

=====Odaire 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged, save for the minor detail that Maligno ''changed'' his name to that from his original, less ridiculous name of ''Figlio''.

=====The Rider's Bridge=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Yet another reinterpretation of the Headless Horseman, this time as a [[dullahan]] who shows up at important bridges in domain-specific forms and attacks anyone who tries to cross. Successfully crossing the bridge may transport you to a different domain.

=====Risibilos 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Parody
::[[Darklord]]: Doerdon

A super-minor domain originally mentioned in brief as part of the infamously terrible "Book of Crypts" anthology. Rewritten into a domain-hopping music hall, where the [[Iron Warriors|humorless]] former-king Doerdon is now condemned to an agonizing eternity as an entertainer, with a sentient ventriloquist dummy in the likeness of Strahd von Zarovich as his partner in comedy. Needless to say, don't be surprised if your DM brings a Strahd muppet to the table.

=====Scaena 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:
Unchanged from its original lore.

=====Sea of Sorrows 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

The Darklord is now Pietra van Rise, a vicious female [[pirate]] turned ghost or sea zombie (it's not clear which). Mention is also made of Blaustein (now ruled by the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives), Dominia (the patients are all avatars of Dr. Heinfroth), the Isle of the Ravens (unchanged), and the new domains of The Lighthouse, which features, well, a lighthouse, and Vigilant's Bluff, where an undead paladin offers refuge so long as you respect his faith.

=====The Shadowlands 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Unchanged.

=====Souragne 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Still Southern Gothic New Orleans, but Anton's got a new backstory as a sadistic prison warden and has been downgraded in terms of power.

=====Staunton Bluffs 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

Largely identical, except the former [[darklord]] is now a good guy and his crime has been given to his retconned sister, Teresa Bleysmith.

=====Tovag 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif:
::[[Darklord]]:

No longer connected to Cavitus, [[Kas]] now fixates on finding [[Vecna]] and resuming their ancient battle.

=====Vhage Agency=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape: An office building
::Motif: Insanity, Film Noir
::[[Darklord]]: Flimira Vhage

A new domain in the form of a detective agency ruled over by Flimira Vhage, who remains unaware that literally the entire agency only exists in her own broken mind. Oh, and it literally looks like an old [[noir]] film brought to life, complete with everything inside being in different shades of monotone gray.

=====Zherisia 5e=====
::Cultural Level:
::Landscape:
::Motif: Serial killings
::[[Darklord]]: Sodo

The elaborate dread [[doppelganger]] society has been wiped out. Now there's just a starving city descending into madness and a single ancient doppelganger trying to preserve its existence through cannibalism. The sewers that used to be called Timor still exist but the marikiths have been replaced with [[Carrion Stalker]]s.

==Notable Non-Darklords==
* [[Van Richten]]
* [[Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins]]
* [[Jander Sunstar]]
* [[Alanik Ray]]
* [[Larissa Snowmane]]
* [[Vistani]]

{{Planescape-Cosmology}}
[[Category:Ravenloft]]