Dark Souls III: What do we want from the DLC?
Aldia, King Vendrick’s Elder Brother
Ignore the ignorant folk who denounce Dark Souls II as worthless, pitiful shenanigans. They couldn’t be more wrong. While Dark Souls I deals with “humanity” as a theme, Dark Souls II deals with “the curse”. It’s importance to the series could be pivotal lore wise, and don’t get us started on how it plays. For me, it encompasses some of my most memorable experiences, and the “Crown DLCs” are impeccably torturous.
The second Souls also has one of the most captivating characters – Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin. He’s King Vendrick’s elder brother, and at one point they were a dynamic duo who tried their utmost to break ‘the curse’; the endless cycle of death. Aldia helped found Vendrick’s Kingdom of Drangleic but ended up secluding himself in his manor. He viewed the Undead as the secret to breaking the curse and performed hideous experiments on them in an attempt to shed the yoke of fate (attain immortality). Vendrick, appalled at his brother’s actions, ended up locking him away and he wasn’t heard from again.
Many believed Aldia became the Ancient Dragon but it turned out to be just one of his experiments (he experimented on Giants and all sorts). In fact, Aldia was transfigured into an immortal, deformed blob of raging fire and withered branches. Speculation abounds here as to how Aldia attained such a strange form, and that’s one question we wouldn’t mind getting an answer to.
You may be wondering why he’s considered the “Scholar of the First Sin”. The simple answer being his insurmountable rage at Gwyn the Lord of Sunlight, who he believed, committed the ‘First Sin’ – Linking the Flame and bringing forth the Age of Fire. In Aldia’s eyes, Gwyn caused men to “assume a fleeting form” and from then on, men were “mere props on the stage of life.”
We don’t gain any more information about him or his legacy in Dark Souls III, and considering he attained immortality at a cost, we wonder if he’s involved in the latest Souls in one way or another.
The Crowns
Oh the Dark Souls II DLCs. Apart from being absolutely incredible, they’re also mind-boggling. You’re tasked with retrieving the lost crowns of three kings, and once you’ve retrieved them all, you combine them to create one wondrous head-percher. It achieves Vendrick’s aim, to break the curse. Wearing it prevents you from hollowing.
Why?
The Untended Graves
In the Consumed King’s Garden lies a gaping hole of punctured rock. At this point, everyone forgets the mental safety measures enforced on you by Dark Souls‘ judicious use of f*ckery and hops in. You’ll drop down into an eerily familiar area where everything is cloaked in darkness. “Hang on, am I in…?”, and the penny drops. The Untended Graves is the starting area of Dark Souls III, and everything remains fairly similar, apart from Iudex Gundyr. He’s lacking the Pus of Man and has piercing, glowing red eyes. With an extra spring in his step and heightened need to obliterate you, Iudex Gundyr’s sprightly in his new-found aggression. In fact, he’s called Champion Gundyr now. Now? Then? Is this the past, present or future?
The relationship between Iudex and Champion Gundyr, to me personally, holds the key to knowing what’s going on here.
Upon defeating Iudex Gundyr, we gather no brilliant soul, no bright orb of victory. This suggests that he’s completely hollow, a mere shell of the Champion he once was, perhaps a vessel for the Pus of Man that rages inside of him. What we do get is a Coiled Sword that he’s rammed into his body in an attempt to contain it. However, when we defeat Champion Gundyr we get a juicy soul with equally juicy details, “Once, a champion came late to the festivities, and was greeted by a shrine without fire, and a bell that would not toll.”
This could imply that Gundyr, an undead champion like us, was fated to go ahead and link the fire. But when he awoke, he was greeted by darkness. The fire had gone out and so there was nothing he could do but vigilantly wait there as an Iudex – meaning ‘Judge’ in Latin – before succumbing to darkness, with the sole intention of acting as a twisted passport control of sorts. Reading through this, and other theories, so many details are highly questionable. Had we in fact stolen his soul in the past, so when we meet him in – potentially – the future, he’s a hollowed shell? And what are these so called “festivities”? Some kind of celebration for the Age of Dark or something else entirely?
It’s higly unlikely concrete answers will address all of our wishes, but we hope that even just one or two are answered. Who knows, we’ll probably be whisked away to meet more characters and more mysteries, further adding to the confusion. And you know what? We’d love that too.
