Curse of the Undead Puns

The three player characters from Dark Souls are facing off in the Kiln of the First Flame. They have access to any equipment from their respective games, and act according to the mechanics of their game. Assume that once they are put down, they stay down as opposed to respawning at a bonfire like they would in normally.

As an extension of this question, which Dark Souls series PC has the best feats?

BONUS: The Hunter from Bloodborne and Slayer of Demons from Demon's Souls enter the battlefield as well. How do they fare?

Hey,

from what I have understood, linking the fire halts the undead curse, which leads to an age, for example the age of lothric (lothric was around for a long time, but it rose while the flame was linked and powerful im assuming). When the flame is linked it leads to an age and as the flame fades the curse starts appearing. I read in a thread on this subreddit where a user claimed that this is not the case? I just wanted to know what you guys think. The halting of the curse does not mean that linking the fire is the best thing to do, as the age of dark might be good, but in the end, had gywn not linked the flame to himself, none of this would have happend in the first place most likely.

So the curse of the undead doesn't seem like anything bad at all to be honest.

Let me get this straight, here is a list of facts I've gathered from reading several lore related posts and item descriptions.

• Humans randomly turn undead by having a darksign branded on some body part

• When an undead dies, the darksign triggers and revives them, turning them into hollow, which is a twisted form of their body, you sometimes become insane and attack other humans when you go hollow, other times being hollow does nothing to your sanity whatsoever

• Every human has humanity inside them, when dying, the humanity is lost or stolen, undeads can use humanity to go from Hollow-->Human forms

• Nobody has ever tried using humanity on an insane hollow, so it is unknown whether it can be used to heal an insane undead (maybe because the process of reverse hollowing has to be done personally, and insane hollows are unable to do the ritual)

Here is when inconsistencies come up:

• Only the player seems to be the one that doesn't go insane by turning hollow, everyone else seems to turn insane the first time they die, every one who is hollow attacks you

• Hollows only seem to attack you, the player, they ignore other human NPCs, phantoms or even other hollows.

• Normally humans seem to die permanently after dying as a hollow or even as a human if they haven't turned undead yet, generic enemies seem to revive every time you rest on a bonfire, but they're generic and as far as we know there can be countless of them in this world, so it's no proof that they can revive infinitely, BUT, the player him/herself seems to be able to revive forever for the rest of the time.

So all in all, the "curse" of the undead doesn't seem like a half bad thing, there is effectively no difference between being human and being a human undead with the darksign, you even get a free second life! (assuming you don't go insane the moment you die) The only inconvenience I can see from this is nothing more than just the same as in a zombie apocalypse, people dying and reviving as zombies, but once you kill the zombie, he/she stays dead, unless you're the player.

So the question is: is everything listed correctly and, how do people explain the inconsistencies?

Thanks in advance for advice.

I’m playing a native superstitious barovian character who is struggling with the spooky supernatural fey and nature aspects of their half-elf heritage. This plus party make up and trying to eventually get an old school vampire hunter like character when I have more levels made paladin and oath of ancients really interesting for me.

I’m worried though about not having any way to turn undead, which also makes sense for the character. I don’t know how much NATURAL nature is left in barovia but I figure life abhors the undead.

I know its not the most optimized character build but I’m considering multiclassing to cleric for a couple levels for turn undead. I have enough stats to do it because I wanted a positive bonus for perception, and I could get buff and healing spells where I wouldn’t have to worry about spell DC.

Before I do, are there any better options I might consider?

Thanks again!

I'm working on a story where the MC gets killed and is brought back because of unfinished business. I'm planning on the MC getting fatally wounded, surviving, not feel the pain, but not healing from his wounds. But surviving an axe hitting your head and living doesn't seem to be enough to motivate actually tying up loose ends. So how do I make being dead feel more painful?

Edit: Modern Earth or similar.

Go into your inventory.

Discard the Darksign.

credits.

One thing I’ve heard a lot is that unkindkled are the supposed cure for the undead curse. When referencing ds2 they are often described as the solution Aldia and Vendrick had been looking for. But I don’t actually understand why.

Unkindled are still forced to be revived at a bonfire upon death as we do many, many, many, sooo many times. They are also far from immune to hollowing, as in the case of Anri and Horace.

Different name, and different “birth” so to speak, but ultimately the same problems.

So I don’t see how they are better off from other undead. Is it that they can die if they CHOSE to? Do they now just have the choice? If at any moment our character died could they just say “fuck it” and just stay dead?

The undead curse is a very mysterious part of the lore. No one really knows why or how it happens. Most people believe that it was caused by Lord Gwyn as a way to further enslave humans in the linking of the fire cycle, but I have a different theory.

The undead curse only starts happening when the fire begins to fade, when it must be linked again. According to the lore, if the fire isn't linked and dies, then a new age will come about. The Age of Dark, ruled by the dark soul of man. My theory is that, with the fire dying and the Age of Dark growing closer, the dark soul grows more powerful. The Dark Soul is supposed to have godly power when the Age of Dark comes, and immortality is a power we see many gods have. As the Age of Dark grows nearer, man grows restless. Humans lose the ability to stay dead, on the brink of godhood.

Similarly, I believe that those gods who depend on the flame grow weaker as the fire dwindles. The strength of man and the weakening of gods could help to explain how in all three games, a mere nameless undead is able to slaughter many legions of enemies and even the gods who rule the lands.

warning: i have not played dark souls 3 yet, so i could be wrong about this.

so, we know that kaathe wants to end the age of fire and start what he calls "the age of man". he attempts to do so by both manipulating undead to do this for him and causing catastrophes throughout lordran's history. and we know that his scheme is related directly to humanity, since both his faction and his actions in the past were tied to humanity. Kaathe used humanity and the abyss to slowly destroy the age of fire, to the point where gwyn sacrificed himself to prolong the fire. kaathe was so close to victory when his greatest, most terrible foe arrived: the undead curse.

What does the curse actually do? well, it does three things:

1. slowly corrodes the victim's sanity/memory.
2. forces them to revive themselves at a bonfire when they die. and the most important one, 3. deprives them from all humanity

this is Kaathe's ultimate hurdle, a curse that spreads umong bearers of the dark soul and forces about 99% if them (not counting the player) to live the rest of their lives as humanity-less hollows. instead of humanity, undead seek souls (which are pretty much established as the domain of gwyn), and dark souls 2 tells us directly that souls are the secret to keep your sanity and memory in lordran and drangleic.

this raises the question, are the gods just hollows who found powerful souls that allowed them to gain human-like form? the dark souls 1 intro cinematic alludes to this, even stating that the gods

> Then, from the Dark they came and found the Souls of Lords within the flame

This is nice and all, bu there is still one question that remains unanswered: who is responsible for the curse? the easy answer would be gwyn or gwyndolin, but the undead curse persists way after their deaths. no, i think that the one who started this was none other than the furitive pygmy himself. The one that got the gods into that mess also saved them from demise.

Kaathe is a known manipulator, and odds are that he was involved in the creation of the dark souls. i think that the furitive pygmy was later ashamed of his deeds, and created the undead curse, a force that spreads through humans faster than the dark soul, to combat his own invention. maybe the curse was even inspired/developed from the gods' form (hollow-like without souls, sentient and powerful beings with souls)

and what about manus? well, it is known that powerful beings can leave their body/soul behind. maybe pygmy lef

My players are currently traveling through an area impacted by an undead curse, cause normal creatures to turn undead. For this I want undead variants of already existing monsters beyond just humanoids. I was originally planning on it just having their undeath be flavor, but I’d rather have some sort of mechanics.

I’m thinking of giving them all poison immunity as well as the undead fortitude ability that zombies have.
If damage reduces the creature to 0 HP it must make a CON save, DC 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the creature drops to 1 HP instead.
I’m open to any other suggestions that you have though.

I’m not sure how to balance for figuring out encounter difficulty though with slightly homebrewed monsters.

For reference my party has an open hand monk, thief rogue, abjuration wizard, ancients paladin, and grave cleric all at level 3, about to level up to level 4.

Hi guys. I have been thinking about relation between first flame and the undead curse for some time. Are you able to explain that? Everybody knows that when the fire fades the curse shows up. BUT WHY?

One explanation is that the curse was somehow created by Gwyn or the Way of the White as method of renewal of the cycle. A sickness with only one cure - linking the flame. But I find it hard to believe that any of them would have enough power to create a curse. I rather think that its origin is natural. When the fire fades the darkness strenghtens and this was manifested as outbreaks of the abyss in Oolacile and New Londo. The abyss is in some way related to humanity which in turn is nothing but dark soul divided into pieces. So maybe the curse is a result of the dark soul 'wanting' to regain all of its pieces (humanity) in order to reach enough power, replace fire and shroud entire world in darkness? In this theory, curse would be 'sucking back' humanity from mankind. But why would they gain immortality?

What do you think?

So I have a spare 20 euro for a while on my Playstation store, so I decided I might aswell spend it, so I seen a few games but the ones in the title stood out, so what one should I get? Say why you think I should get it instead of the others if possible aswel!

Is this a hack, how do I avoid this, I'm trying to summon for help with the gargoyles and this is infuriating

Just a thought as i read other threads around this topic. What if MMOs have the opposite problem of dying? The real problem seems to be that MMOs are undying because the genre is built around neverending updates.

There's no incentive to innovate because most players are locked in to existing games. There's a lot of 10 to 20 year old zombie MMOs, big and small, lurching around with niches of PvPers, space simmers, raiders, solo farmers, sandboxers and so on. They've all accumulated decades of limited event collectibles, pets, costumes, done their homes up nicely, have stable Discords, guild buddies and all that.

On rare occasion, the publisher goes full retard and does an SWG or SWL and drives players off. Otherwise every publisher with an AAA budget already has a profitable MMO. ActiBlizz has WoW. SqEnix has FF14. Bethesda has ESO. Even EA has SWTOR. Smaller titles like DDO and Champions Online are also plodding along with stable numbers. And i don't even need to get started on the Asian ones like Lineage and DFO.

Rebirth can only happen when the old dies. Otherwise, many players are subscribed and continue to invest in existing games. Many talented devs are settled into their current studios to churn out more content for the same games. That's less risky and cheaper than making a new game.

Compare that to other genres. There's so many new mobile games because there's a lot of failure and churn. Many mobile games shut down within months. Meanwhile games with a start and finish like RPGs naturally make players want to move on to a new title after clearing the content.

MMORPGs didn't fail, instead they became so successful that they broke the cycle.

I read something implying this last night and gave it some more thought. It’s a fun alternate ending/extension. Its also kind of supported by the story.

First let’s talk about Asshai. Asshai is a port city on the easternmost side of the map in the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands are a massive region in which Asshai exists. Thus Asshai is often called Asshai by the Shadow. The city located where the Ash River meets the Jade Sea. It is allegedly big enough to contain Kings Landing, Oldtown, Qarth, and Volantis combined, but its population is very small, that of an average market town. There’s a lot of ominous stuff about this region, you can read up on it more from the wiki. The river runs black, no children live here and no animals or fruit survive. There is a corpse city called Stygi that nobody knows much about. The whole area is rumored to be a land of shadows, demons, ghosts, and dragons (Except the dragons aren’t rumored, they are heavily implied).

Warlocks, spellbinders, shadowcasters, and the whole shebang are allowed to practice in Asshai. Melisandre notes that the magic power she feels at the wall is similar to that she feels in Asshai. Nothing is forbidden. There is no government that anyone knows of, only slaves and their masters.

Asshai is a land of dragons. The eggs Dany are given are reportedly from the Shadowlands beyond Asshai. Bran sees dragons above the Shadowlands in his visions. The magic of Westeros isn’t connected to the magic in these lands. It has never stopped there.

Now. How does the theory work?

Dany was told numerous times that she needed to go through Asshai to attain her final destiny. Here are 2 examples:

>Quaithe: To go north, you must journey south, to reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.

>Daenerys: What is there in Asshai that I will not find in Qarth?

>Quaithe: Truth.

>Daenerys: Go? Where should we go?

>Jorah: Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it is a great port.

Perhaps Danys greatest failure was ignoring this advice, and Drogon may be giving her a 2nd chance to do it.

Drogon was last seen headed East. It’s very possible he is headed to his birthplace (egg-laying place?) and the land where other Dragons live. This is a natural development. Drogon would have no reason to stay in Westeros/Essos alone when the Shadowlands

As above post Ur theories on how bayek gets in the trance/ dream like state/ sees the undead in curse of the Pharaohs dlc....

Serious theories also welcome