Editing Dark Souls (section)

===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 its 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 Lords of Cinder 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 Aldrich's 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 nobodies, fighting at the end of the world, over something that barely even exists anymore and doesn't even matter.]]

The fight starts with Gael fighting like an animal, but after he bleeds he realizes his plan is working: His blood has become a pigment of the dark soul, appropriate for the painting. With his sole purpose fulfilled, he hollows and stands and fights like a knight rather than the animal he had become in pursuit of the pigment needed for his Lady's painting. When you finish him off, you carry off his soul and his pigment and give it to the Painter. She then thanks you, says she'll name the world after you (Hopefully, nothing embarrassing, right?) and hopes that her Uncle Gael will come home soon. No, you don't tell her you just brutally murdered him for all of this to happen. You bastard.

So ends Dark Souls. Dark and depressing... But damn fun to destroy and be destroyed by.
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