Post by galakan on Nov 7, 2016 19:21:45 GMT
So I have been playing a lot of the Dark Souls series recently, and have been really digging into the lore of the game. If you're like me, you can't play a game without thinking of D&D ideas and this particular game REALLY got my mind going. There's a lot here, so I will be highlighting different parts of the game in each post along with some story ideas that I adapted from each section to show kinda how you can subtly change these things for your own game.
I also want to point out that the game doesn't really tell you this story directly and intentionally sets up the experience to be one in which players investigate and draw their own conclusions. So some things I mention in these are thoughts mainly from the Dark Souls community and myself that I have evidence for, but nothing concrete. So pls don't have my head for making some creative assumptions.
I am going to start with the beginning and talk about the core theme of the game and the event that started it all. The Creation Myth of Dark Souls.
SPOILER WARNING!!!! THE DARK SOULS SERIES IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD PLAY IT! IF YOU HAVE NOT, THIS MAY RUIN SOME OF THE PLOT!
ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY READY TO BE SPOILED!?...okay
The First Flame and the War of the Dragons:
In the beginning, the world was made up of two layers. The Above and the Below. Not much is known of this era, other than it was an era of Grey. A time in which nothing died and the Ancient Dragons ruled all. In The Above, the dragons lived amidst giant trees simply called Life-Trees through which all of nature thrived and dominated the known world. Sentient species, however, were comprised of what are called "giants". They are basically the first humanoids who live amidst the darkness of The Below, terrified of the mighty dragons above. There was a stability in this world that lasted ages, but a single event was about to change everything.
Amidst the depths of The Below there was a single spark of flame. A fire that emanated a raw power that had never been felt in the world up until this point. This flame was known as The First Flame, and its pure energy drew four powerful giants to it. These ancient beings divided the power of the flame among themselves and imbued their very souls with this power. Each ancient one inherited a different aspect of the First Flame's power. They are listed here:
Gwyn, Nito, and Izalith were determined to use the power of the First Flame to change the world, and declared themselves "Lords of Fire". They gathered their forces to topple the Dragon tyrants in The Above, for in the world of Dark Souls it is ambition and the drive to achieve one's goals that determines strength and power, and at this time there is no greater prize. But the dragons of old were incredibly tough foes, and their immortality was something that pure might couldn't topple. But the three Lords would gain a crucial ally. After the First Flame appeared, all sorts of life was brought into the world. One such being was Seath The Scaleless, an albino dragon who was born without scales, and thus was not immortal.
Seath's jealousy of his kin ate away at him, and he determined that he would help end the lives of these "immortal beings" by giving away their secret. It was the scales of the dragons that gave them their longevity, and could be shredded through the use of lightning. The Life Trees sustained the dragons and needed to be destroyed in order to ensure that no more of the great beasts would return. Armed with this knowledge, Gwyn gave his knights part of his power and they used great bolts of lightning to strip the scales off of the great Wyrms and leave them exposed to a wave of poison and plague from Nito that would act as the death-blow.
To ensure the dragons would not return, Izalith used her pyromancies to ignite the Life Trees and turn the ancient structures to ash. From these cinders the Three Lords were heralded as gods and a golden age known as "The Age of Fire" began. Humanity would pray to those mighty beings that saved them from the Below and several nations would rise. Gwyn would form the most powerful of these nations known as Lordran and his great capitol city Anor Londo, which towered atop a mighty mountain.
But the very nature of fire is change and disparity. We see this in the conflicting natures between Life and Death (Nito and Izalith). And a great Cycle has begun with Gwyn's age of Light that will slowly bring an Age of Darkness.....
Story Ideas From This!
As I mentioned, I plan to highlight some cool ideas that you can draw from this origin story. I think top 10s are definitely cool, but from this initial post I only wanted to have 5 to save room. So here goes.
Anyway...that was quite the rant, so I will leave things here. As I mentioned there is A LOT from Dark Souls I can talk about, so I will likely post another of these things focusing on various specific parts of the story.
Sources:
VaatiVidya - Prepare to Cry - This guy is just the best. His videos are much more elegantly worded than my ramblings and he does a great job summarizing each game in the series.
DaveControl - Also another great summary of the game, but a little more on the nose than Vaati is. Still great though.
The Dark Souls Items - While there is no link to this other than to troll the wiki, it was the most valuable resource to find info in the game. Since Dark Souls doesn't really tell you much directly, almost the whole sub-text of what is going on is given to you through the descriptions of items from the game. If you played through DS and didn't see much lore, the go back and read the item descriptions you have. They were amazing.
I also have a list of monsters here that I posted a while ago (before work caught up to me and I had to disappear for a while). Feel free to check it out.
I also want to point out that the game doesn't really tell you this story directly and intentionally sets up the experience to be one in which players investigate and draw their own conclusions. So some things I mention in these are thoughts mainly from the Dark Souls community and myself that I have evidence for, but nothing concrete. So pls don't have my head for making some creative assumptions.
I am going to start with the beginning and talk about the core theme of the game and the event that started it all. The Creation Myth of Dark Souls.
SPOILER WARNING!!!! THE DARK SOULS SERIES IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD PLAY IT! IF YOU HAVE NOT, THIS MAY RUIN SOME OF THE PLOT!
ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY READY TO BE SPOILED!?...okay
The First Flame and the War of the Dragons:
In the beginning, the world was made up of two layers. The Above and the Below. Not much is known of this era, other than it was an era of Grey. A time in which nothing died and the Ancient Dragons ruled all. In The Above, the dragons lived amidst giant trees simply called Life-Trees through which all of nature thrived and dominated the known world. Sentient species, however, were comprised of what are called "giants". They are basically the first humanoids who live amidst the darkness of The Below, terrified of the mighty dragons above. There was a stability in this world that lasted ages, but a single event was about to change everything.
Amidst the depths of The Below there was a single spark of flame. A fire that emanated a raw power that had never been felt in the world up until this point. This flame was known as The First Flame, and its pure energy drew four powerful giants to it. These ancient beings divided the power of the flame among themselves and imbued their very souls with this power. Each ancient one inherited a different aspect of the First Flame's power. They are listed here:
- Lord Gwyn (The Light Soul) - Arguably the most powerful of the souls initially. Lord Gwyn's Soul of Light imbued him with the power to create lightning and various other kinds of miracles that would heal his allies. Combined with his already incredible martial prowess, this made him essentially the first paladin. He was the unquestioned leader of the bunch.
- Nito: First of the Dead (Soul of Death) - Nito's purpose in this world is to ensure that all living things must die as he did. To keep the circle of life going. His main goal was to do away with the undying dragons that were an affront to everything he stood for.
- The Witch of Izalith (The Soul of Life) - The Witch of Izalith's soul embodies the life that fire can provide. She strives to ensure that life is always present in this world and was also credited with the first magic known as pyromancy.
- The Furtive Pygmy (The Dark Soul) - This "lord" was the first human according to legend. Unlike the other three great ones, the Pygmy stumbled upon a soul hiding in the shadows of the First Flame and kept it to himself. He hid away from what the other three were doing and used his soul to grow a race of humans that would inhabit the world. Due to his nature though, he was given no credit for this and was lost in time.
Gwyn, Nito, and Izalith were determined to use the power of the First Flame to change the world, and declared themselves "Lords of Fire". They gathered their forces to topple the Dragon tyrants in The Above, for in the world of Dark Souls it is ambition and the drive to achieve one's goals that determines strength and power, and at this time there is no greater prize. But the dragons of old were incredibly tough foes, and their immortality was something that pure might couldn't topple. But the three Lords would gain a crucial ally. After the First Flame appeared, all sorts of life was brought into the world. One such being was Seath The Scaleless, an albino dragon who was born without scales, and thus was not immortal.
Seath's jealousy of his kin ate away at him, and he determined that he would help end the lives of these "immortal beings" by giving away their secret. It was the scales of the dragons that gave them their longevity, and could be shredded through the use of lightning. The Life Trees sustained the dragons and needed to be destroyed in order to ensure that no more of the great beasts would return. Armed with this knowledge, Gwyn gave his knights part of his power and they used great bolts of lightning to strip the scales off of the great Wyrms and leave them exposed to a wave of poison and plague from Nito that would act as the death-blow.
To ensure the dragons would not return, Izalith used her pyromancies to ignite the Life Trees and turn the ancient structures to ash. From these cinders the Three Lords were heralded as gods and a golden age known as "The Age of Fire" began. Humanity would pray to those mighty beings that saved them from the Below and several nations would rise. Gwyn would form the most powerful of these nations known as Lordran and his great capitol city Anor Londo, which towered atop a mighty mountain.
But the very nature of fire is change and disparity. We see this in the conflicting natures between Life and Death (Nito and Izalith). And a great Cycle has begun with Gwyn's age of Light that will slowly bring an Age of Darkness.....
Story Ideas From This!
As I mentioned, I plan to highlight some cool ideas that you can draw from this origin story. I think top 10s are definitely cool, but from this initial post I only wanted to have 5 to save room. So here goes.
- Dragon Tyrants: How could I not have something with these guys? Having a world of miserable humanoids that are controlled by ruthless dragons could very easily be the basis of a whole campaign. My particular idea is that there are 5 Dragon Gods (or lords?) that each watch over a specific kingdom (or even element?). The mortal races must defeat each dragon to gain the power of that beast in order to topple the others. You would essentially be playing the under-dogs trying to rise above their overlords.
- The First Flame: This one is kinda a well used idea, but I still think that pulling from it is awesome. Basically the fact that there is this one source of life and power in your world that kinda started everything can generate endless story ideas. My particular one is that some mage/wizard attains a piece of this First Flame (either an artifact or just inherits the power) and attempts to fashion him/herself as a god. You could even have them use this to challenge the existing gods in your pantheon and your party is chosen by the gods to stop this mortal. For only mortals can use the power of this First Flame and as such, only mortals can stop it.
- Immortal beings and the outcast of their society: Seath was one of the coolest ideas for me because he is part of this all powerful race, but was born without their one essential trait. And I love this idea regardless of if the race are dragons or not. So my idea is your campaign takes place in a world with these all powerful beings. They might be good or bad for the world, doesn't matter, but either way your party is given some reason to not like them on a personal level. In comes "The Outcast" from this race. They tell you the secret to finally putting their kin of powerful beings on an equal playing field and tasks your party with bringing them this secret McGuffin that they can use to do this.
- Gwyn's Silver Knights: The idea of these loyal knights that are trained by this powerful being and becoming the first order of paladins was fascinating. Now my idea here is a little oddball, but bear with me. My plan is to not allow players to choose paladin from the start, but they can choose any other class. As their leader gives them missions, their loyalty to their lord will be tested. If they remain loyal to their lord they are slowly granted Paladin abilities as they level (on-top of what they already get for their class). If they challenge their lord they are slowly given Anti-paladin abilities as they go and the story will take on the roll of these anti-heroes that face the might of a great being. It would take some work on behalf of the DM to balance and fine-tune this idea, but I always thought doing something like this would be super cool.
- The Cycle of Light And Dark: There really is no other choice for my top story, because this aspect of Dark Souls really hit me when I was playing the game. Since the new image of this world was created by a flame, the whole of existence seems to share in some of the inherent properties of fire itself. The chief among them being the battle of Light and Darkness over control. So the campaign idea I have here is that you are beings that are trying to stave off or circumvent this cycle that is imposed on the universe itself. This doesn't have to take the form it does in Dark Souls, but can just be a reoccurring event or theme that this world of yours has.
Either way, the goal here would be that your players find out that this cycle has happened many many times before. And despite the efforts of past heroes, it has never been defeated, it has only been delayed. So the goal of the campaign becomes to find a way to end it. Once and for all. This, to me, leaves SO MUCH room for moral dilemmas because I can't just make the solution to ending the cycle happy with rainbows and unicorns now can I? This cycle can only end by sacrificing major parts of what make this world what it is. My personal idea is that you have this race in your world that is relatively new and most beings look down on them. Maybe they are like kobolds or something that most players will hate for no apparent reason. But your players find out that in order to end the cycle, humanity (or whatever their specific race is) must end and the world must be given to these kobolds to start anew. That way they must choose to either leave the world the way it is, knowing that suffering will continue to come in waves during every cycle, or end the suffering through one fell stroke and leave the world to a new power.
Anyway...that was quite the rant, so I will leave things here. As I mentioned there is A LOT from Dark Souls I can talk about, so I will likely post another of these things focusing on various specific parts of the story.
Sources:
VaatiVidya - Prepare to Cry - This guy is just the best. His videos are much more elegantly worded than my ramblings and he does a great job summarizing each game in the series.
DaveControl - Also another great summary of the game, but a little more on the nose than Vaati is. Still great though.
The Dark Souls Items - While there is no link to this other than to troll the wiki, it was the most valuable resource to find info in the game. Since Dark Souls doesn't really tell you much directly, almost the whole sub-text of what is going on is given to you through the descriptions of items from the game. If you played through DS and didn't see much lore, the go back and read the item descriptions you have. They were amazing.
I also have a list of monsters here that I posted a while ago (before work caught up to me and I had to disappear for a while). Feel free to check it out.