Transference of Souls in Dark Souls 2 [Dark Souls 2]

[@SinclairLore]

While the video is processing, check out our Dark Souls 2: Pyromancer Glocken lore :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/rX7HqHetmZeJapI

[@krisafiekoulis7804]

The image of Sin "demolishing an entire turkey leg in the manner of a medieval monarque" is one I shall cherish forever. lol Thank for that Sophie! :D

[@SinclairLore]

😁

[@FirstLast-ew1st]

At the start you were so close to uncovering the enteric nervous system and the secrets of neurogastroenterology.

[@virtualhimeji462]

I feel like trees grow from giant corpses not that they turn into trees as there bodies appear to be petrified. The giants corpse must be highly nutritional for plants making me think there bodies may not just be flesh but also soil and stone

[@beansnrice321]

In eastern medicine the soul is in the Hara, or center of gravity. In Ancient Greek medicine it's in the liver.

[@joshk494]

Potentially reductive, but if I were to try and isolate the big questions at the heart of each dark souls game... DS1: what is the nature and significance of the soul? DS2: what is the nature and significance of the body? DS3: what is the nature and significance of time?

[@payday7679]

I thought that giants in ds2 where tainted archtrees animated by souls and then vendrik and ivory king imitated what they saw with other stones( in a sense archtrees are like stone IMO)

[@SaintMarianne]

When Aldia becomes what we see in game, he looks like a tree. Is that connected to how the Giants become trees upon death?

[@hiddenshadow2105]

Most likely, as Aldia was very interested in giants and experimented on them a lot. There is a whole pile of dead giants in Aldia's Keep (above the acid pits).

[@MarionetteDuAuguste]

Vendrick clearly extracted his souls by having all of his blood extracted. As we know from Dark Souls 3, the soul is at least partly in the blood. It’s why he looks so gross, he’s not hollow, he’s just a raisin.

[@barbarianzg8826]

What makes a hollow hollow? When the undead looses all the souls,it looses his mind and looses the appetite for it. Souls makes Aldia stronger and stronger and lack of souls heading into hollowing. The blood over time turns to dust,cause undead or hollow are not living beings. So,cptn. Drummond says something bout misguided barbarism and all i'm thinking that Vendrick and his brother was struggling w something that was even beyond the giants help. What was it, that even with the giants help couldn't solve something that bothers the two brothers the most? The curse,hollowing or something else.. Well,ya can't have powerfull souls without some sacrifice. World doesn't work that way,doesn't it?

[@hiddenshadow2105]

This is a very good explanation, I think.

[@oceanviolets1306]

Vendrick just watched "Sketchy Boss Arenas" with a smooth, slanted surface above him. His soul seeped out of him like steam and collected in a little bottle.

[@punishedbrak4255]

What happens to "Gods" when they're robbed of the source of their Souls, The First Flame? They revert to what they were once before - Hollows, essentially, given that Pygmies (Humans) are from the same stock of being; Tree-like Giants, just as Pygmies become treelike beings after becoming "Hollow" and mutated by the presence and amount of the Dark Soul we have as we gather it and concentrate it, our "Humanity" as the original game so eloquently put it.

[@SuperAKguy]

Awesome I just started playing Dark Souls 2 for the first time! I love playing and listening to you guys sum up lore, the longer the better!

[@hiddenshadow2105]

"People might not have noticed it because they're either avoiding the room entirely or just screaming" Delivered in _perfect_ tone.

[@Arkygator]

Maybe Ornifex uses her dolls as golems to help in her craftsmanship to make up for her lack of arms?

[@barbarianzg8826]

Ornifex: With which wing should I make the dolls,kree kree!

[@felixgauer2447]

I have a theory about what kind of story DS 2 tries to tell, and it ties into the story of the giants. I think there was a Zullie the Witch vid of how to Gutter was supposed to be a huge area about the the Gyrm and their culture ( that was cut from the game in the end). Some of the Gyrm are hollow, some are not. In the Shaded Ruins there are these lion people of which some are hollow and some are not. The Giant Lord is super similar to Gwyn. The Throne of Want is built into a throne that was obviouly a giant´s. To me this tells a story of how the many cycles before DS 2 might have looked like. So maybe there was a cycle in which a Gyrm lord linked the flame and changed the world after his vision. Maybe there was a cycle for a Lion Person who linked the flame. Obviously there was a giant lord who climbed the Throne of Want and linked the flame. And here is the thing. We don´t know how the world looked like after that. Gwyn had the power to change the laws of life and death because he was afraid of the Dark(in my mind at least), so how would a Giant Lord change the world. And whatever the Giant Lord changed in the world, that is what Nashandra has to reclaim. It ´s like changing the ending of DS 3 just by giving the Eyes to the Firekeeper. To me, DS 2 is *very* obvious about that part of the story by giving us no hints at all. It´s like, many side chars have a lot of lore but the *one big mystery* of DS 2 has no lore at all. That´s a hint. Love your channel, btw

[@tallenrockwell5917]

For reference, I think it's Illusory Wall's video "How The Gutter Got Gutted" you're mentioning. Also I like your theory of each kingdom imposing it's will over the land with the firelinking, it also explains why the Old Iron King had the ability to meld iron to his will that they talk about in the next video, good stuff.

[@hiddenshadow2105]

This is actually a very good episode because yes, transference of souls is so permeating through DS2 but nothing conclusive is done with it and people don't really talk about it. I kind of think it was one of the topics that was dropped when the DS2 project leadership changed and they had to scramble the game from different pieces.

[@pthats]

Sophie reprimanding “that’s the dialectic” is my new godhead

[@livicent208]

Vendrick sucked his soul out with a vacuum, Luigi's Mansion style and put it in Shrine of Amana, because he knew nobody would want his soul bad enough to go there again

[@latrodectusmactans7592]

The giant turn into trees when they die… And Aldia is a burning mass of branches. Definitely seems like he took something from them.

[@nataliealphonse4634]

YES MORE DS2 STUFF I LOVE YOOOU. These statues always fascinated me they're so weird and striking

[@beansnrice321]

If this is dark souls, Vendrick removed his soul by dying somewhere and never going back to pick it up. XD

[@SinclairLore]

lol

[@pabloraulpereyra4948]

Probably the dragon rider close to his soul killed him. That men have very loyal servant, he was complety able to usurp the trhone at that point

[@skippycoulter]

I love when you just talk about it team. This is - aside from the free association shitposting - is why I love your content. In depth discursive trips, it's perfection

[@ReyndommVideos]

Some fairly holy discoveries, I'd say.

[@jennyc3919]

Ancient Greeks theorized that the mind was in the stomach. They didn’t know what brains were for

[@neilsanders2341]

Cheeky old Vendo, soul swapper extraordinaire.

[@beansnrice321]

The, "Giants," in Dark Souls 1 were the gods. If the Giants in 2 are the same as the giants in 1, then that means that Vendrick is the hero from 1 and the giants are, like Nito and Gwyn, etc.

[@punishedbrak4255]

What happens to "Gods" when they're robbed of the source of their Power/Souls, The First Flame? They revert to what they were once before - Hollows, essentially, given that Pygmies (Humans) are from the same stock of being; Tree-like Giants, just as Humans become treelike beings mutated by the presence and amount of the Dark Souls we have, our "Humanity" as the game so eloquently put it.

[@nataliealphonse4634]

Lmao Ornifex's placement always felt like a troll to me just like Strahds in the base game. You want our best boss gear? Enjoy going through a horde of the most annoying enemies in the game.

[@nataliealphonse4634]

In the base game the hollows outside of Strahd aggro'd! They patched it in the expansions I think but I remember having to spam pyromancy bc I was so afraid of Strahd taking a hit lol

[@Grzester23]

Good thing you can just "Marie Kondo" them. Just kill the enemies enough time so they stop respawning. Tedious but better than praying a stray shot doesn't hit Ornifex

[@barbarianzg8826]

This mech is actually awe.. You want boss weapons? You have to earn the privilege! But the concept of going there manny times is obnoxious. Lucky me for accidentally killing Orni so..

[@panos3320]

Outside lore, I think part of the reason souls are so important in Dark Souls 2, is because it was the game that bought back souls as a reward for all boss killings. Souls are really important in Demons souls, but then Dark souls came and only special beings had special souls. Not all bosses gave one. Also, most lord souls are not even converted to a reward, instead, they function as keys for the endgame.

[@brnecessities3335]

The golems absorb nearby released souls, so could that ability have been taken from the giants and built into the golems? I guess that could get really complicated though seeing how the player character does something similar when you get souls from killing enemies. Could it be related to the void in the dark sign?

[@neofly]

While the question of how souls are moved is important, the game is not worried about the specifics, but with the possibility; moving souls to and from beings and/or objects is the basic mechanic of the setting. For example, after killing a boss, you normally obtain its soul, and it is a physical object you can destroy to obtain anonymous currency souls. OR you can infuse said soul into a weapon to make a boss weapon. Then the question is not how Vendrick left his soul on that chair, but why. Moving your own soul is not something anyone else ever wanted to do in the three games, but it must have been possible. Everyone else wanted to avoid doing this, cause it mean hollowifying immediately, and everyone wants to avoid becoming Hollow, but at some points Gwyn and others gave _parts_ of their own soul to others, so the move is not completely unheard of. It's just that nobody just took out his full soul, only parts of it.Vendrick is the only one mad enough to rip off his own soul.

[@heatheroutre]

Were the spirit trees once giants?

[@sophie.m.pilbeam]

We probably should have (maybe we still will) talked about how Dark Souls 3 kind of picks up on this by having corpses turning into trees, and one of Gwyn's children being the goddess of plantlife.

[@Kouenwin]

I wonder if the exstracting souls and putting them in different "containers" is research into immortality? In a way immortality would be removing one self from the cycle.

[@SinclairLore]

Oh interesting!

[@Arkygator]

I like how one of the themes in DS2 is people doing the quantum physics equivalent of magic to fix a flaw in the world. In DS3 it's more about how do people get the flaw to work instead and it's why the world is doomed. Had the Soul Arts of Drangleich been allowed to flourish, the Undead Curse might have been undone.

[@roriksavant]

More Dark Souls 2! I love it lol

[@hobartpaving8986]

So Dark Souls II is actually a Kingdom Hearts game?

[@pabloraulpereyra4948]

👏👏👏

[@Hulliness2]

go off kweens

[@caiooa]

There is certainly and overarching theme on DS1-2-3 about a buddhist natural cycle of death and rebirth, transmigration of the soul and reincarnation in a different form. Dragons, rocks, giants, archtrees, the ground of the world. Gods die one day, demons die one day, and so will humans. Some people like shalquoir and ds3 painter accept it and directly state that old things need to die so something new can be born. Meanwhile others don't accept it and try to move time backward ... or at least freeze it. On the name o this "great cause", gwyn, aldia, vendrik, ludleth, etc commit great atrocities that in the end won't be able to prevent the inevitable. I thinks this thematic is a darling dear of fromsoftware, as it came back stronger than evern on sekiro.

[@Mrfour-lt2oz]

An anagram of "soul" is Lous(e), so Vendrick got his soul sucked out through his chin from the lice in his beard.

[@cabudagavin3896]

So basically during the peak of the Giant war, Vendrick and Aldia were so hung up on what the soul was, and what the world was that they stole the giants souls and found out that they were in a time loop where they basically where the ones who made the "souls" in the first place... that the soul as a physical entity is just the collective confusion behind what was first, giant or Man? See Giants are telepathic beings, akin to a hive mind. They are the generation of the soul, and the brothers basically just bound this things hollow soul into flesh puppets. I dont know where this fits in with their souls, I suppose they found that they too were these golems, when they hoped they had a privileged position as a non golem entity, separate from the genera, that they hope there was a higher purpose for them than: "we did it accidentally when we were trying to find out why it was" But the lord ;) always returns to claim his dues, thats why the giants returned to war, and thats Why Nashandra is queen. But even that is a collective confusion, because there was no going back, the dark forgets as too does the light. Two sides destined to reunite in end, but the end is the beginning and that singularity is simultaneous with the now. Im sure it must suck to only realize at the end that a life of duty to create is a life on rails.

[@SinclairLore]

Okay but, MD Geist 2 is still the greatest anime of all time ;) -sin

[@cabudagavin3896]

@@SinclairLore

[@cabudagavin3896]

@@SinclairLore do you think this contradicts DS1 lore? Particularly on the three god souls? I felt like, as was DS3 the end of the world, ds2 was a breaking down of time, but also the center in a sense, and the curse is the disparity between the two opposing forces of all dichotomies struggling to reunite. I know that is seems a bit iffy to think of giants as the source of soul, especially with ds1 lore, and I dont really know how the three god souls got into the past from here without first realizing... your thoughts on that last point? Also, I think that fire is the union of dark and light, weird but I do, I guess because we have a fire, burns things bias, but that bias is because we view time as moving in one particular direction. like... fire is the only thing that dragons can embody without being corrupted. And I think that basically explains that the true union is the union of abyss and fire, hence, the reality of the world is the dark sign. And thus, emphasis on the whole time loop thing.

[@SinclairLore]

Tbh I don’t even remember souls lore at this point XD I’m all about Outlast these days -sin

[@cabudagavin3896]

@@SinclairLore oh hai, I think I worked out that Vendrick took the throne of want itself from the giants.