Dark Souls 3

     Hello.  Today I'm blogging about one of my new favorite games.

     I've gotten a LOT of new games this summer.  I got The Witcher 3, Dying Light, and Rocket League by using some Best Buy cards my grandparents got me.  I'm getting No Man's Sky in August, and I've gotten Dark Souls 3 in celebration of my first job.  There was a period of about two weeks before I got the game where I was researching things about it, like gameplay, tips for beginners, and lore.  I found the lore and the basic story structure of the games the most interesting.

     The creation myth of the world of Dark Souls is very interesting.  In the beginning, there was no heat, no cold, no life, no death, no light, and no dark.  No opposites existed.  Above the ground all was grey, and immense dragons lived outside of the cycle of life and death.  Underneath the ground, unthinking humanoid creatures roamed with no purpose, will, or soul.  Everything changed when the First Flame appeared.  The Fire sprang up underground and four humanoids claimed four powerful Lord Souls from the fire.  The Witch of Izalith claimed the Soul of Life, Nido The First of the Dead claimed the Soul of Death, and Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, claimed the Soul of Light.  After these powerful Gods left the flame a fourth humanoid appeared, The Furtive Pygmy.  He claimed a unique soul, the Dark Soul.  He split the Dark Soul into thousands of pieces, and each one inhabited a humanoid, creating mankind.

     The three lords ruled over these humans, and before long they rose up to war with the dragons above.  Seathe, a scaleless dragon, betrayed his kind to Gwyn and told them that the dragon's stone scales were the secret of their immortality.  With this knowledge, Gwyn and his knights struck down the dragons with bolts of lightning, and the Age of Fire began, and opposites took form.  Powerful kingdoms rose up ruled by Gwyn and The Witch, and humanity and these Gods were at peace.  This peace would not last, for as all things must begin, so must all things end.  And so the First Flame began to die out.  With the First Flame dying, the power of the God's souls would too, and they would die with the Fire.  Humanity, each possessing a part of the Dark Soul, would come to rule the Earth in the upcoming Age of Dark.  The Witch of Izalith sought to solve this problem by creating a new First Flame, but her experiments in pyromancy were ultimately a failure.  Instead she created the Flames of Chaos, and demons were born.  Gwyn traveled downwards with his knights to the Kiln of the First Flame, and there he linked his soul to the Fire, kindling it once more, and burning him and his knights into oblivion in the process.

     With the Age of Fire extended and Nature's course broken, a horrible curse settled over mankind.  Whenever the Flame would begin to die again, the Curse of Undead would arise.  Humans would begin to be born with the Darksign.  Humans with the mark had the Curse of Undead could never die, and would only reform at Bonfires that had sprouted over the world after the Linking of the First Flame.  The sign was a curse because one could never die, and after dying so many times they would turn into Hollows.  Hollows had no memories of their past lives, and roamed the Earth with no thought or purpose, only to kill those that had not yet became as they were.  Each time this occurred mankind would spiral into Chaos and a knew champion would rise and Link the Flame, averting the Undead Curse for a few more centuries.  This was a twisted cycle, and humanity would never know the true Age of Dark that they were meant to inherit.

     I LOVE this lore of the dark souls series.  In the games, you are the champion called upon to Link the Flame and end the curse, and always there is a decision to make and a struggle to break free from this twisted cycle.  Dark Souls 3 is rumored to be the last in the series, and I'm extremely excited for the end of this game.  I highly recommend purchasing this game if you like RPGs, fantasy, and a challenge.  Bye.