⭐ Dark Souls Lore Podcast ⭐ Theories with the Ashen Hollow ⭐ Jake, Richie, Sin ⭐

[@TheAshenHollow]

I want to correct 2 mistakes I made cause I'm bad at words and was nervous. The moon landing was in 69 and I meant Alkosh, not Ahka. Okay, bye. Thanks for having me Sin and Richie!

[@SinclairLore]

Ty for coming on!

[@criticalrants]

Dark Souls lore in 2011: Man, this Solaire guy sure is friendly. Dark Souls lore in 2021: Willy Wonka is Velka.

[@Jaden-Ring]

Reading this almost killed me 😂

[@Nehelenia3000]

I read this comment before watching the video so I thought you’re just joking. You were not. You were not…

[@FACEHEADD]

I'm loving the "Hi, Richie here..." interludes. The after-school special background track is spectacular LOL

[@hyldendemon]

Richie describing the dragons like they're old people

[@chompythebeast]

I don't really buy that the dragon genocide was placed squarely at the feet of the dragons themselves. We literally see dragon survivors, so the idea that they are somehow incompatible with the age of the gods or humans just sounds like the kind of prejudice we see in our world when native peoples are "replaced". Sophie here seems to me to be echoing the convenient lies of the conquerors, not any sort of planar, material truism

[@lauri363]

Velka is also Finnish, written exactly like that, and it means "debt". Considering her role (you have to pay back if you sin), I find this pretty fitting, if not intentional. Speaking of Russian, it would be fun to make Sin guess what Finnish words that come from Russian mean. Some examples: toveri, lafka, katiska, kauhtana, lutka, ruoska, rotu and so on. :)

[@chompythebeast]

"Toveri" even I can get with very little Russian or Finnish, especially after watching so much of Yugopnik's excellent analyses. But yeah that would be fun haha

[@hiddenshadow2105]

Richard's interludes got their own graphics, and it has cat!

[@davideo7286]

Richie is spot on in regards to the discussion of disparity and lord souls. You all did a great job discussing the Deep and the ash world of Dark Souls 3.

[@vasylpark2149]

I can feel JSF's sanity slipping.

[@Stradiwhovius963]

Oh god the second bell. Honestly, Ritchie, that has tied every bit of confusion I've had over the various iterations of DS3's stories and how one became the other. I would love a video on how you think the... almost the original or "correct" way of how the story flowed. Especially given at one point we seem to believe Nameless King was a Lord of Cinder

[@sophiepilbeam7647]

The reason I've put it off is we keep finding more and more stuff :D One day I'll rule a line under it and just talk about what we have.

[@leme3082]

16:00 " then why did you read it, JAKE!"

[@SinclairLore]

Lol

[@EdenHellCipher]

Yayyyy! I discovered Ashen Hollow a few months ago and immediately binged everything. Stoked you guys recorded together again! Also, Richie still and will always look like an eldritch cultist. It's his destiny.

[@chrisp.9380]

In interviews Miyazaki has specifically referred to a single furtive pygmy existing and even went out of his way to say it's a he (I'll try to find the link). And considering Dark Souls 1 was designed to be a standalone game, I'm going to assume the furtive pygmy is probably meant to be Manus. Hell, he even has the word Man in his name. So I think that the pygmy lords were simply meant to be the first group of hollows given the largest chunks of the dark soul from Manus.

[@VileMr.Grinch]

Yeah I always sort of thought that the pygmy lords were "the first followers" of Manus. I mean his title is "Father of the abyss" after all.

[@chrisp.9380]

@@VileMr.Grinch Agreed, to me it just doesn't make sense that beings as soul thirsty as hollows would have just been willing to share a lord soul before they received higher thought's from that soul. So I feel like there has to have been at least one original hollow who found the dark soul, even if he kept the thing whole for less than a day.

[@VileMr.Grinch]

@@chrisp.9380 Exactly

[@nataliealphonse4634]

THANK YOU. To me dark souls 1 and 2 are their own contained trilogy and three comes along and just sort of retcons a lot (the firstborn, 8 pygmies, etc) guess that paycheque was too tempting 🤷‍♀️

[@VileMr.Grinch]

@@nataliealphonse4634 How is TNK a retcon ?? Don't tell me you were one of those that legit thought Solaire was the first born lmaoooo

[@Arkygator]

I dunno about the Bed of Chaos not being the Witch. The entire reason you have to kill it is getting the Lord Soul of the Witch.

[@sergiocrowe9848]

Absolutely feel the same way. Her Lord Soul specifically says it is the same soul found by the witch.

[@TheAshenHollow]

Yes, you do need the Witch's soul for the lordvessel! But the reason we get her soul from the Bed of Chaos is because she used her own soul as the catalyst in her attempt to make a new First Flame, but instead created the BoC. Everything else points to the Witch being dead or otherwise! =]

[@Arkygator]

@@TheAshenHollow I think removing the Lord Soul would just basically hollow her like how there is nothing left of Gwyn in his cinder form except a grunting fighter. So I don't imagine her being Velka if she was dethatched from the Bed of Chaos. I find the idea that Velka could be one of the daughters of Chaos with her own fragment of that Lord Soul to be an agreeable idea tho.

[@TheAshenHollow]

@@Arkygator that could be the case, but I don't believe it is. The Witch and her daughters had control over the Flame for some amount of time, seemingly at least enough time for the Witch to give birth. So I don't think the absence of a Lord Soul leaves her with nothing. Even the official Lore Compendium speaks on how she removed her Lord Soul to use in her plan. As for her identity and whether or not she could be Velka is a whole other conversation too long for me to type on my phone, haha!

[@Arkygator]

@@TheAshenHollow It's definitely confusing, like a lot of cryptic things in Dark Souls.

[@finnmcdermott7248]

Love the way you guys present your ideas 💡

[@SinclairLore]

Thank you! 😊

[@chrisp.9380]

I think all lizard type creatures, such as those in Darkroot Garden, are decedents of the everlasting dragons that have simply changed to suit their new environment filled with disparity. The Drakes would be an example of a less changed descendant, while the tree snakes would likely be far more distant descendants. It makes sense that the power of souls being unleashed on the world, quite literally the power of change, would also affect the dragons, even if they hated it. For example even the original everlasting dragons can now literally breath out flame, raw soul power, which I would say is quite the change for a species that at one point teetered the line between animate and inanimate. I think the same is true of all flora in the game being descendants of Archtrees that evolved as a result of and in an attempt to cope with disparity. It's why these trees that seemed very mineral like at the start of the Dark Souls universe are now lush and green, filled with life, filled with souls.

[@oliverpratt36]

Loooooove the relaxing music in the background

[@GeekDom78]

This was a fantastic listen! Jake is awesome & to have you Guys work with him was a real treat. Now to start pondering what Jake's going to use as Golden Tickets in his Willy Velka video 🤔😉

[@jasonwu1847]

2011... you and Richie need to definitely do a ten year anniversary of Dark Souls

[@justinbryant9029]

New Velka video hype

[@FACEHEADD]

Great stuff as usual 👏 👌 Thanks guys, I look forward to future uploads!

[@NerdanimolKidrool]

the undead are growing into trees and giants "de"compose into trees; returning to harmony (as opposed to "disparity"). maybe the ashen one is the (arch?)tree living on through failed linking. the earth is tree (the old one) #treeearth

[@feircy]

How did they just gloss over sin being put on to dark souls by todd howard lol. I remember buying dark souls in a small local game store, they had no copies and the casheir went to walmart across the street, bought one, and then resold it to me at price. Man those were days lol

[@Kid_Naps]

Willy Velka and the Sin Factory 😅

[@danielrhodes548]

So it’s possible the world is ash because Ludleth was the previous attempted Lord of Cinder. Ignoring the possible Pygmy origin, we see a man who speaks of himself with great ambition and possibly delusions of grandeur. (I may be but small, but I will die a colossus.) He was a man nonetheless who sought power that he had not earned for himself which is represented in his ability to transpose souls. This was his calling card in life; sorcery that derived artifacts and magic from using the souls of those naturally more powerful than oneself. He transposed the soul of some great, soul devouring entity into a ring after all, as proof of his self perceived greatness. It is perhaps this claim to unearned power that led him to believe that he could do the same with something as mighty as the First Flame, not understanding the true cost of what would happen if he failed. And so the greying, little pretender, ignorant of the role he would truly fulfill was defeated by the Soul of Cinder and cast upon the Flame. It is his corpse we see the Soul of Cinder dragging away in the opening cinematic. This in turn created a greying world, shrinking to match the meager soul of its architect, and the heroes and villains of its lands are mostly pretenders, ignorant of the true nature/origins of the roles they inhabit. And every Lord that inherited Flame from this point on followed in his footsteps. They failed and became sacrifices, empowering the Soul of Cinder into the composite boss we battle at the end of the game. It really is as if the world of Dark Souls is a trick of light and shadow whose nature is revealed by the Flame/Soul they flicker and dance around. We are not even the true Chosen Undead, or the Bearer of the Curse who seeks to become a True Monarch. We are Ash. We are charred remnants of those roles. Therefore it is only right that in this iteration of the world a creature such as us should be the one to claim the Fire for ourselves, no matter whose cause we do it in the name of. Thankfully the little painter girl stays disconnected from all of this madness and does her best to paint a world without a First Flame-based power structure, impermanent though it may be, and quite possibly as it should be. God I love listening to this podcast. It really inspires these fun little spur of the moment interpretations of the lore and what stories it may be trying to tell. Hope all that made sense.

[@leme3082]

You guys don't know how much I appreciate these lore discussions as an escape from all the political bs lately. Don't ever stop

[@chompythebeast]

*19:19* Glory to the People's Red Banner

[@chompythebeast]

The "furitive pygmies" being the opposite of furitive despite the ruling class propaganda, finding the Dark Soul and sharing it freely amongst all their kind, founding Humanity itself: *19:22*

[@jacobbishop577]

Ooo yeeeah gimme that LORE :))

[@ijakerz93]

Woo

[@paxluporum4447]

Comment for the comment gods.

[@EE-jp5ev]

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