why are there dark knights in the asylum?

[Witch ~]

And why is one in your former cell? I never understood the lore implication

[dcy665]

Your imagination has failed you. But, you have many friends here in the forums. We have a broader set of experiences with upper management. Here is a reasonably accurate version if there was anybody in the chain of command that was fearful of The Powers That Be:

Imagine this "chosen undead" shows up.
You're supposed to keep an eye on them, because some dumb prophecy
Check the cell - uh, oh oh

Black Knights are the required security after, as the old saying goes, the horse has escaped the barn. Typical middle management screw up. Now, they try to blame the Black Knights.

/joke off

Good Luck

[Goodwin]

Hello!

If we remember correctly, before visiting Undead Asylum again, there is a key on the roof of Firelink Shrine.

Originally posted by Undead Asylum F2 East/West Key:

Key to the iron bars on the east/west side of the
second floor of the North Undead Asylum.

The Undead Asylum is a giant Undead prison,
segmented by countless iron bars.

But even if a hero found a key in Lordran
to liberate this prison, would he have the
means, or the heart, to ever come back?

Pay attention to the last expression/question - "... would he have the means, or the heart, to ever come back?".

There may be some important part of our hero's history/backstory that the author(s) aren't sharing with us... at least not directly.

What if you actually find your way back and dare to return? What do you discover then?

Originally posted by Peculiar Doll:

A strange doll in strange dress.

There once was an abomination who had no place in this world. She clutched this doll tightly, and eventually was drawn into a cold and lonely painted world.

Perhaps the real reason is different: not to prevent the prisoner from escaping, at least from the Undead Asylum... but to prevent him (your hero) from escaping to the Painted World of Ariamis... from your duty/goal to meet Gwyn and decide the fate of this world.

There is something completely different about the Painted World itself. Something inexpressible.

Unlike other areas/locations where the passage is guarded by a powerful creature, here you can leave the world without fighting the guardian... Why?

Perhaps your character is connected/belongs to this Painted World or is a reflection of it... or even the entire Painted World is a reflection of your character... How long has your character been imprisoned? Decades, centuries perhaps. And what is left of him?

But we missed the part where the doll appears in Undead Asylum. The impossible happened twice in a row.
- Once, an unknown knight throws a corpse with a key into your cell so that you can escape from prison. Where did this knight come from? Why did he come here? Who was this knight?
- Since the "Chosen Undead" is not supposed to return to the prison, it only has one purpose... so returning to the cell mostly feels like a violation of its original purpose...

But unfortunately or fortunately fate has not been defeated - even if you reach the Painted World, you will find nothing... only the opportunity to stay a little longer. But in the end, all that is impossible will happen, you will leave the Painted World to fulfill your original destiny, even at this moment you have no idea about it...

This is just one of the possible versions, since many, many questions remain unanswered and/or not communicated to us directly.

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If you look at it from another perspective, it's not just about the story, but also about game progression, so don't be surprised that the Undead Assylum guards have received a little more reinforcements.

Again, there's a lot missing here, but maybe it's not such a bad thing while it's missing... you have the opportunity to make sense of it however you want.

[Bandy]

Very fine replies.

If not being too self-deluded, I believe have a good imagination (and think Game Masters I have played PnP RPGs would agree...) but how these stories got woven together from these in-game scraps mystify me. Granted, why the DK is in the Asylum later, and in your former cell, certainly makes sense, but...

Just putting this out there, devs said "Well, give them a little to read, they will fill in the rest better than we ever could...". Kind of like when driving a car and pass a woman walking (or whatever preferred gender here...), your mind fills in all sorts of details you cannot see, she becomes more beautiful because you cannot tell, she is just a blur otherwise. At the stop light she's catching up, you look in the mirror, and you realize...

[sekai]

The meta reason is that they needed a reason to recycle the Painted World, which was made in early stages of development initially as Nito's domain, as well as that someone at FromSoft definitely had a thought of "what if players wanted to return to the tutorial stage?". The clash of those 2 ideas resulted in a key item to the Painted World spawning in Undead Asylum after tutorial, a useful but more or less optional ring being placed in a very specific location to let the player know that they can come back to the tutorial, the new mobs spawning for a higher leveled player (including the Black Knights) when they return, and that you get to send off Oscar a second time for closure.

So why the Black Knights? Because they're cool, they don't respawn (not usually anyway), that they can actually fit into the corridors of Undead Aslyum, and most importantly, it's easy to come up a reasonable lore reason why they would show up there.

............

The in-universe reason is done through implication.

And the most terrifying implication of the reasoning behind any of the Black Knights in the game, including the ones in Undead Asylum, is that there are NO REASON for any of the things they did. They JUST DID BECAUSE THEY MUST.

Black Knights are the remains of some of the army of Silver Knights that went with Gwyn on his last journey to the Kiln of the First Flame where they, together with Gwyn himself, were sacrificed to feed the dying flame in a desperate bid to extend the Age of Fire one last time before ruin. The Black Knights were the unfortunate few that survived total annihilation of flesh and soul at the all-consuming might of the First Flame and are now doomed to an agonising fate worse than death as slaves to their own nature of when they still breathed.

Despite their stature and strength, Black Knights are not alive, not even in an undead sense, nor are they really conscious. They are essentially walking piles of ashes, held together by their last flicker of souls, and the things they do are no more intelligent than the shape of smoke from a bonfire. Yet in death, they are still compelled to loyally carry out certain tasks that are presumably for the betterment of the kingdom Gwyn had built simply because they have been doing that for a very, very long time.

Some Black Knights would wander out of the Kiln of First Flame and took up various guarding posts at various key defence locations such as the top of a watch tower, an entrance to an important location, or even deep parts of the catacombs. One could easily surmise that they may perhaps trying to resume the duties they had in life like an apparition unaware of their demise. However it is important to remember that Black Knights are neither alive nor conscious.

The truth is much simpler, terrifyingly so. They take actions on what they do, is simply because it must be done. They have served the kingdom for so long that even the last visage of their being still faithfully carry out tasks, at the absence of order, because it would be something that would be needed. It is done, because it feels right, even when the observer has already ceased to observe. It is all done, because it is what is to be done. Nothing more, nothing less.

And so the Black Knights carried their slow and burdened footsteps, trekking across Lordran each on their mission. Two would somehow made the journey to Undead Asylum. And with them, lied the lifeless body of a nameless individual who were once the owner of Peculiar Doll.

If you were to ask me, I do not believe the Black Knights were there to assassinate this individual, nor do I believe they were even aware of the item possessed on the person, nor are themselves even sentient at all. Instead, this individual was brought here by the two Black Knights where they, most probably, expired on their own shortly after arrival due to unknown reasons (probably the long and unforgiving journey to get here). There is no deeper reason to the doll, and the individual just so happened to be a safekeeper or a worshipper of Priscilla, no doubt considered a heretic of their time and probably skilled at stealth to evade capture for this long.

To put it simply, this doll-bearing individual was simply there at the Undead Asylum, because he was found an undead, and undeads were corralled up to go to the Asylum to wait for the end of the world. And so they did it. The fact the doll-bearer carried Peculiar Doll and the location of their cell were probably coincidental (it also wouldn't surprise me if the cell of Chosen Undead was selected purely because it's the only one left with a working lock since it's probably one of the few, or even the only cell, that was opened properly by a key while the others were probably forcefully broken out).

The Black Knight's thoughtlessness at Undead Asylum can even been seen from the fact they never left the location and the quarters they are in are suspiciously empty of other undeads. It would point at the Black Knights culling the undeads for rioting, as undeads appeared to have broken out of their cells and trying to escape confinement. But there are far better things the Black Knights could do outside of 1shotting a whole castle of feeble undeads yet they still choose to do it. Because they didn't make any decisions nor take any orders, their body just moved to do so as a result of the fact they're the ashes of Silver Knights who might be order to do it in this event and the now husks of their body still remembers and executes it.

There is no thought process on the part of the Black Knight for any of this just like there are no pulses on their still smoking body made of ashes. It all happened because they are the last floating fibres of the once-living Silver Knights that served Anor Londo. A moving shadow of the past. That's it.

A silent, ghostly, and profound tragedy of Black Knights.