What is Dark in the lore?

[nohelpforu]

What exactly is The Dark?

What I gathered is that The dark is the time when the flame of the undead goes out and humanity gains/regains its power as the dominant force on earth. I also gathered that the darkness that fuels hexes is directly related to humanity, or the force called humanity.

Anyone have a more accurate and detailed explanation based on what we know from all three dark souls titles?

[Zoopler]

Do you mean Dark, as in like Dark weapon, or as in The Abyss?
Also, when looking it up, make sure you don't mix in stuff from Demon's Souls. As the gameplay is similar, but the story is 100% not the same universe.

[nohelpforu]

Doesnt matter if they are in the same universe, the fantasy elements are the same. I dont mean either of those actually as they are just parts of what the characters have referred to as the dark. Why do people worship it, why is it used in hexes, what is it's relation to humanity, what is the dark as a time-frame in dark souls lore history?

Things like that.

[Big Boom Boom]

Dark is part of the flame, the flame gave birth to light and dark, and humanity came from the dark.

They should change the name to Flame Souls, duh.

[nohelpforu]

There must be more to it than that, it doesn't explain everything.

[G.C._madGin]

Originally posted by nohelpforu:

What exactly is The Dark?

What I gathered is that The dark is the time when the flame of the undead goes out and humanity gains/regains its power as the dominant force on earth. I also gathered that the darkness that fuels hexes is directly related to humanity, or the force called humanity.

Anyone have a more accurate and detailed explanation based on what we know from all three dark souls titles?

Yeah as it was mentioned, there were three ages:

• The time of the everlasting dragons with their archtrees and dead still age of gray.
  
• Deep down though, the fire was created and lord souls took their power from it. Making things like hot/cold or life/death a reality.
  
• They went on to remove the gray world of the dragons to bring on an new age of light.
  
• But with light comes dark. There was the furtive pygmy of DS1 who took his soul from the dark.
  
• So humans despite being from the Dark soul were raised in Gwyn's age of light.
  
• If you pay attention to the dialogue in DS1, you'll notice most non-human beings (such as Gwyns four knights) have an initial disrespect/distrust for/of humans.
  
• So long story short, it's up to a human to save Gwyn's light, even though he clearly opposed the idea of the age of dark aka age of "man" (not so much man as the game seemingly implies at times).
  
• See despite being from the dark, humans get screwed over by it as well. They get all twisted and deformed into monsters. Leading me to think that Gwyn was trying to save humanity as well by linking the fire, since people in DS have I guess adapted or evolved to need the light in order to preserve their human forms. Maybe humans as we know them in the present time of DS are quite different from what they began as?

As for why they have dark magic? It makes sense to me as they are simply invoking human based soul arts. It's powerful due to all of humanity having a fragment of a Lord soul. Which if you know DS, it's a very powerful soul. A larger fragment later plays a big role in DS2 to further the idea that it's pretty strong even in broken up little bits.

Lastly as to why humans go undead as the fire fades? Aka the dark soul/fire link. Well as I hinted at above, fire provides a clear source of energy/life/stability to humans. Without it, that energy fades and the line between life and death gets blurry. I think the "hollow" state of humans is their original state, a blank slate, but mindless and savage just like those who were "corrupted" by the dark in DS1.

Note*
A lot of this is still just me filling in the blanks so take from it what you will. Afterall making/thinking up what the lore is was always a key part of the Dark Souls experience that I loved.

[Legas]

What I gather (my interpretation) is that when the flame came upon the world, 4 great souls were born within the flame.

The soul of Death (Nito)
The soul of Life (Witch of Izalith)
The soul of Light (Gwyn)
The soul of Dark (Manus/Furtive Pigmy)

Manus split his soul within all hollows, thus creating man (so hollow + fragment of dark soul(humanites) = human) (I guess thats why the game is called Dark Souls)

However while all souls grew weaker with the fading flame, only the soul of dark grew stronger.
Gwin trembled at the dark and sheperd the humans to kindle the fading flame, somehow he created the curse of the undead and the prophecy of the chosen undead, he who would sacrifice great souls to kindle the first flame.

That means Gwyn (through Frampt) manipulates you in the first game to burn your soul and all the great souls you gathered in your journey to kindle the first flame to keep the dark at bay. This, of couse, happens after Gwyn tried to kindle the flame using his own soul, getting hollowed in the process.

So the dark is just one of the 4 original disparities, but the only one that grow stronger with the fading flame, so eventually, when the flames fade, only dark will remain. Gwyn (and the other gods) broke this fate by creating somehow the undead curse, thus creating a neverending cycle of kindling so the flame would never die out.

[Foe]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/06/understanding-the-lore-of-dark-souls-2

[Copy]

The Dark is merely a concept... like God. While it is unclear if The Dark itself even exists there are things associated with it i.e. monsters (creatures of The Dark), caves, darkness, dark magic, souls... While it is unclear wether or not things can originate from The Dark, it is quite clear they can become Dark (like souls of Velstadt, Watcher and Defender). It can also seen in the DKS1 cinematic that The Furtive Pigmy found a soul that had the same origin as 3 other great souls, at least it looked the same at first, only smaller. It is later stated by Kaathe that it was The Dark Soul, but it was Kaathe that led people of Oolacile/New Londo to chaos and misery, so he can arguably be trusted. So The Dark Soul could possibly not be Dark originally... It could become Dark later.

Originally posted by nohelpforu:

The dark is the time when the flame of the undead goes out and humanity gains/regains its power as the dominant force on earth.

That would more accurately be called The Age of Darkness.

[Nick Naughty]

Originally posted by G.C._madGin:

• The time of the everlasting dragons with their archtrees and dead still age of gray.
  
• Deep down though, the fire was created and lord souls took their power from it. Making things like hot/cold or life/death a reality.

That is what baffles me, first there was dragons, then there was fire.

Thus they came, to find the souls of lords within the flame.

Has this happened before, being that nito was the first to find a lord soul, suggesting that there was a lord with a soul to begin with. Perhaps the flame that the souls of lords were picked up from, came from the lord vessel.

Its almost like what came first, the chicken or the egg.

[G.C._madGin]

Originally posted by Nick Naughty:

Originally posted by G.C._madGin:

• The time of the everlasting dragons with their archtrees and dead still age of gray.
  
• Deep down though, the fire was created and lord souls took their power from it. Making things like hot/cold or life/death a reality.

That is what baffles me, first there was dragons, then there was fire.

Thus they came, to find the souls of lords within the flame.

Has this happened before, being that nito was the first to find a lord soul, suggesting that there was a lord with a soul to begin with. Perhaps the flame that the souls of lords were picked up from, came from the lord vessel.

Its almost like what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Could be, I mean that cycle style setup was the plot of ds2 more or less. But at that point you're getting into the realm of what creates something from nothing. No right answers to be found there atm, so any suggestion/idea will be open to debate :)

[Nick Naughty]

Originally posted by G.C._madGin:

Originally posted by Nick Naughty:

That is what baffles me, first there was dragons, then there was fire.

Thus they came, to find the souls of lords within the flame.

Has this happened before, being that nito was the first to find a lord soul, suggesting that there was a lord with a soul to begin with. Perhaps the flame that the souls of lords were picked up from, came from the lord vessel.

Its almost like what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Could be, I mean that cycle style setup was the plot of ds2 more or less. But at that point you're getting into the realm of what creates something from nothing. No right answers to be found there atm, so any suggestion/idea will be open to debate :)

Its crazy, we make an assumption that lordran was the first but it possible it wasn't, drangling could be 8th or 30th kingdom to be made.