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thetygre · 7 years

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Dark Souls Lore Ramblings #4

@invokingbees said:

I like reading your ramblings, this stuff is always fun. I had always been under the impression Humanity/Dark were the same thing, physical objects, that Dark is diffused Humanity or something, I don’t know. I’d like to see you tackle Souls themselves, soul magic and how the hell people use it as a currency, what souls even ARE (some kind of energy source?), how we absorb them, that stuff.

Oh man, funny little coincidence here, that is the exact place that I was about to go. My research into the Dark got me thinking about how Humanity and Souls work.

Souls, the Humanity Score, and States of Being

Let’s start with the basics, looking at states of being and the components of that existence piece by piece.

This is your basic human being. I don’t know how all this shit works for Lords, Giants, Witches, and whatever else is out there, but I’m running on the assumption that it’s pretty similar given that they all share a root species. Anyway, your standard human is composed of three different components; the Soul, Humanity, and the Body. When a person has all three of those components and they are properly aligned, they are basically normal people. Even Undead are indistinguishable from humans when they have all their shit together.

When a human loses their Humanity but still retains their body and soul, they become a Hollow. Not a lot to explain here; basically a zombie. Mindless corpse animated by Soul. Hard to tell whether they feel an innate hunger for Humanity or if they’re just acting mindlessly. Not everyone who dies turns into a Hollow, of course; only those with the Undead Curse. That’s why the whole world isn’t being overrun by every Tom, Dick, and Larry who kicked the bucket.

Presumably, they work like the Boletarians in Demon’s Souls. (And let’s get this out of the way now; a lot of this involves the words ‘like/because Demon’s Souls’.) I.E. ‘Weaker’ human beings or those who have been Hollows longer are more feral, while younger Hollows and individuals with more Humanity and Souls in life retain some brain function, at least for a while, and can remember how to use weapons and tools. This hints at a possible link between Souls and cognition which, again, like Demon’s Souls. Heck, some Hollows outright keep their personalities; just look at the two Undead Merchants in the Undead Burg.

Conversely, Humanity and Soul without a body results in wraithes, like the ones in the Abyss and maybe even Red Phantoms. Technically, these creatures have a physical presence, but only in the sense that Souls and Humanity are physical objects. Essentially, they are incorporeal with the bare minimum of existence, relating to their Humanity ‘body’ and Souls. I don’t want to say ‘ectoplasm’, but the word definitely comes to mind.

Finally, a body without Souls is a corpse. Just... a fucking corpse. Can’t make it any clearer than that. Dead. Deceased. Demised. A stiff. Bereft of life. Rest in piece. Etc etera et al. Sometimes, you find a corpse with Humanity still on it (in it?); Hell, Patches makes a business out of scavenging Humanity out of bodies. Again, not everyone who dies, or even everyone with strong Humanity, becomes a Hollow; just those with the Undead Curse. The more interesting (and way more common) scenario is when you find a body with its Soul still on it. Given the nature of Souls, they’re supposed to disappear on death, absorbed by whoever killed the person in question. Maybe absorbing Souls is something unique to Undead? They absorb Humanity, so it wouldn’t be entirely without precedent.

Even though I harped on it a bunch in my last lore ramblings, let’s talk about Humanity just a little bit more. Humanity are little pieces of the Dark Soul, which itself is just a chunk of Dark (or not; depends on which Primordial Serpent you’re talking to). For all we know, Dark is just the overall spread of Humanity across the human species, or maybe it is some primordial force from before time and the First Flame. Probably both, because that would be slightly more inconvenient to me trying to make sense of everything.

Anyway, getting back on topic; every human being has some Humanity. Forget the allegorical version of that sentence, we’re talking about the hard item here. In the Souls community, there’s this thing called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Humanity; ‘soft’ Humanity is the Humanity in your inventory, carried around in the same place as your mountain of titanite chunks and Souls. ‘Hard’ Humanity is the Humanity your character has active on them, Hollow or Human. In order to be a Human, you have to spend at least one hard Humanity at a bonfire.

Lore-wise, this translates to everybody having some base, starter-point of Humanity that makes them a conscious human being. Usually, this base Humanity dissipates with the body’s transition between animate and inanimate states (aka dying). Everything after that base is surplus. The best way to see this is to become a Darkwraith and drain friendly NPCs of their extra Humanity. Each NPC has a different amounts; some just have the base-line amount of Humanity necessary to be a Human and can’t lose it without being killed.

It’s actually kind of cool to compare and contrast different NPCs and the amount of Humanity they have. You can come up with all sorts of different backstories and inferences about the amounts they have. For instance, Siegmeyer has four Humanity, but his daughter, Sieglinde, has ten. Rhea also has a large amount, a total of twelve Humanity! I like to think that this implies that everybody actually reaches a surplus of Humanity when they mature, but then it gets gradually whittled down over the course of life and/or the Undead Curse. Both Rhea and Sieglinde only recently started adventuring, for example. Meanwhile, Darkwraiths like Lautrec and Mildred have Humanity to spare, while Kirk has given all of his hunted Humanity to the Pale Lady. Oscar naturally has no Humanity left, non-humans like Ciaran and Quelanna give nothing, and it goes on and on.

Now this mass of Humanity is generally experienced as a singular presence. In other words, every person with more than one Humanity doesn’t feel like they have five or six people inside them. There are two notable exceptions. First and foremost are Twin Humanities; this is a pair of Humanities linked together by some kind of bond. Mother and child, twin siblings, woman and giant spider, etc. Really interesting because it does seem to confirm that, like the wraithes in Oolacile, Humanity is reproduced by fission. Second is the experience Fire Keepers have with Humanity; they are acutely aware of each separate piece of Humanity contributed to them. They actually do experience their surplus Humanity as a swarm of independent cells inside them. I bring the experience of Humanity up because it’s necessary to understanding our next subject...

Souls. Good old, dependable Souls. Series title. We don’t call it ‘Humanityborne’ or the ‘Ephemeral Eye Series’. Frankly though, we should; Souls are almost completely unaddressed as a subject in Dark Souls, and there’s really no explanation for them. The very first line in Demon’s Souls, literally the first thing you see, explains that Souls are equivalent to cognition and the mind. But that role is taken by Humanity in Dark Souls, so that just really leaves Souls as an anomaly. In the end, Souls in Dark Souls appear to be nothing but a leftover from Demon’s Souls. But half the fun in lore is putting together the pieces left by mechanics and game design decisions. So what are Souls?

The better question might be ‘What is Soul?’. Put simply, Soul is the animating force of the universe. It is present in all animate things; living, dead, Undead, constructed, spiritual. All of it. It is a type of energy that gives life, and binds life together. Kind of like that other, mystical force thingy. Magic powers included. Gonna’ be honest, I was kind of going to give magic it’s own thing later. Suffice it to say that Soul is the medium by which an individual makes magic manifest. Or something like that.

Soul is experienced as Souls. Again, like Humanity, an individual has a singular Soul. It’s just measured in a concise, plural metric. Even Hollows and vermin have a couple of hundred Souls. That doesn’t mean they literally have five hundred individual Souls in them, it’s just how it’s measured. Also like Humanity, it can be assumed that a character has an inherent amount of Souls that are consumed in the transition between animate and inanimate; everything beyond that is extra.

Another big question is how exactly Souls are used, both as a currency and as a means of self-enhancement. The short answer is (say it with me now) because that’s how it was in Demon’s Souls. For the moment, let’s just assume that Souls really are representative of experience along with being an energy source and by trading it into the Bonfire, your character is ‘reflecting’ and growing in certain talents. After all, what does your character do at the Bonfire but stare pensively into the flame, contemplating their journey? Whether or not Souls as an energy source actually alter the Undead’s body isn’t really clear; it’s not a theme like it was in Demon’s Souls (that’s it; it’s a drinking game now).

As for why Souls are currency... that one really is just an inexplicable artifact. In Demon’s Souls (SHOT), Souls were used as currency because the world was in such terrible state that money no longer had any value. In Dark Souls, it’s explained that the situation is pretty much the same but localized in Lordran. I’m going to allow this since there’s nothing that necessarily states that people have a particularly easy time traveling out of Lordran, and Lordran itself is basically in the same apocalyptic state as the Demon’s Souls (SHOT) world. But I have to think that if people could actually travel back to their homelands, real life currency like the coins you find would still have some pull. Honestly, Salt and Sanctuary handles this better, but I’ll shut up about it now.

How does your character access these Souls for currency and self enhancement? Same way they access Humanity. Which is code for I really, really don’t know or could find anything addressing it even in Demon’s Souls. I always imagined that it was a kind of pseudo-magic that all Undead inherently known on their transformation, or maybe their entrance to Lordran. I have to wonder what kind of effects a Souls and Humanity trade would have on the world outside Lordran, but let’s keep pressing forward.

Unique entities occasionally have unique Souls in addition to the Souls they give on death. This can be assumed to be one of two things from where I’m standing; either it’s the base Soul that is usually consumed on death but survives for these unique exampleon, or it’s something different from the Soul altogether, like a chunk of Humanity or Divinity or whatever the case may be. I think it’s more likely that it’s the first one given that you can get unique souls from all kinds of different entities; Lords, demons, Fire Keepers, a particularly large insect, etc.

The most obvious examples are Fire Keeper Souls, which are interesting because they represent some kind of dichotomy between the Soul, Humanity, and the First Flame. Also, can we just talk about how weird they look? Like, even for unique Souls, Fire Keeper Souls are freaky looking. I mean really look at it. What does it remind you of? I don’t want to sound weird but, well, it reminds me of a zygote. I’m dead serious here; it’s probably meant to look like smoke because Fire Maiden/fire, but I honestly think it looks like an ovum and sperm. Even the description is weirdly biological; a Fire Maiden’s Soul is a draw for countless wriggling, living Humanity. It’s weird right? Right? I don’t know what point it could be working toward, but it’s not like it’s the only reproductive imagery in the game. We all know the Bed of Chaos and Giygas have some shit in common, that’s all I’m saying. Anyway, just something I wanted to talk about in case I don’t do a separate thing for Fire Maidens.

I stated earlier that Souls are the animating energy of the universe, but I think it goes beyond even that. I think that Souls are literally in all things, both animate and inanimate. Soul is as present in rocks and metal and even piles of poop as it is in living things. That’s where the Serpents come in; they can use their big old chompers to filter out the material (Dark?) existence (re: eat it) and leave the pure energy, the Souls, behind for you to collect. We’ll get to the Serpents on their own terms, but it’s the implications about Soul that interest me.

Literally everything has a Soul. And if you know anything about Japanese culture, then you know about the belief system of Shinto. Shinto evolved from an essentially animistic series of native Japanese religions and shamanistic traditions, and even though it’s changed and declined in Japan, it is still a part of Japanese culture. But anyway, Shinto’s animism is founded on the notion that all things have kami, a spirit. Here in the West, we’re more familiar with the direct characters and creatures that kami manifest as; gods like Amaterasu and Susanoo, animal spirits like nine-tailed foxes and tanuki, or even object yokai like the tsukumogami. But that divine, spiritual energy is still present in all things. In other words, I think that Souls, in Dark Souls at least, draw from the Japanese notion of kami to some degree.

But that’s not the only Oriental philosophy present in Dark Souls, and certainly not the only pertaining to the nature of the human spirit. (Shocking, right?) This might be a stretch, so I’m probably reading too much into it, but in Chinese Taoism, the soul is split in to at least two parts (sometimes it’s three, sometimes it’s ten; still figuring it out). This in itself isn’t unusual; if I remember my Egyptian mythology correctly, then the soul was split into anywhere between five and thirteen different aspects. Anyway, in Taoism, the soul is naturally drawn between yin and yang, being divided into hun and po. Hun is the spiritual, ethereal yang soul that leaves the body after death. Po is the corporeal yin soul that stays with the body. Hun is intelligent, but po is base and crude. After hun leaves the body, the po might control the body and become an undead creature; a jiangshi, the famous Chinese hopping vampire. While a longer stretch then the Japanese kami, there are some parallels between hun and po and Souls and Humanity.

God, I sound like fucking Game Theorists right now. He who fights lore and all that crap. Anyway, I guess there is no ultimate lesson here beyond the reminder that for all it’s Western trappings, Dark Souls is still very much a Japanese game with Eastern mythology, religion, spirituality, and philosophy at its heart. That’s before I get into Buddhism, existentialism, the cyclical nature of reality, the pursuit of power, and all that deeper stuff. I’m was just trying to talk about in-game currency and wound up talking about Chinese vampires. So... not bad. Anything that takes me from video games to jiangshi is not bad at all.

#Dark Souls #Dark Souls Lore #Soulsborne #Souls Series #Demon's Souls #dark souls lore ramblings

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