At Worlds end a young woman clutches an egg, fully devoted, to protecting, whatever's inside
Alas, she's approached by a warrior who crushes the egg shattering all of the illusions that it represented I
I could just as easily be talking about Dark Souls 3 with that statement
fact is Miyazaki has a long-standing tradition of pulling quite heavily from other forms of Media
And just like learning about Artorias from Guts
just like learning about Bloodborne from HP Lovecraft
I want Angel's egg to teach us about Filianore and I will answer the following questions:
One, what does the egg represent?
And two, how does Filianore have the power to forestall the end of the world?
And make no mistake, that's exactly what she's doing.
These questions aren't really touched upon in the game at all.
Not in any descriptions, and you'd think that they would be
But Angel's egg, this animated movie made by Mamoru Oshii in 1985
succinctly answers both of these questions, and the answer is faith
A young girl wonders an abandoned City filling glass urns with water she knows not why she does this yet
She does it all the same and in much the same way she carries and protect this large egg
holding it closely throughout the movie
And long story short you should watch the movie if you're interested
one of the very few pieces of dialogue in this movie talks about a bird that represents life outside of this world
and the girl believes that the bird now resides inside of the egg.
This character, the warrior wishes to break the egg and know one way or another
what's inside. But the girl believes it will hatch.
And the point I want to make is this:
Blind faith offers this great deal of power ,because
Believing something will hatch from the egg many would say is better than knowing one way or another
For there may well be nothing inside the egg or whatever's inside might have already died
So compared to the grim skeptical warrior
The girl is comforted by her faith, and she moves with purpose. She's protected by Faith
The end result of analyzing Angel's egg in this way is that we can now
reliably ascribe Faith to Filianore's character
And that's very important because in Dark souls faith has a remarkable amount of power
I mean think about it when you learn a miracle in this game what you're actually doing from a lore perspective is learning how to
Recite the words of a famous miracle the mere act of which can heal wounds emit Force cast lightning
many other things
"Miracles began as tales told by gods passed down through us since the first flame"
"Isn't it extraordinary to think they've existed since the very origins of the world"
Furthermore true faith is blind that much is obvious and it's at the very core of faith
But in Dark souls 3 it takes that a little bit further because not only do miracles
Require Faith it just so happens that being blind
enhances their power
Remember all tomes in Dark Souls 3 are actually in Braille
which is a language of physical bumps for the blind to be able to read
A practice in Dark Souls 3 that is informed from the tradition of placing and I quote,
great faith in the words of the blind.
So not only is Filianore a blind woman of faith
She's also the daughter of Gwyn, and she doesn't need to recite no simple miracle
It's likely that she is the miracle
This legendary character, a direct descendant of what could only be called a God,
Is something you tell tales about
So she has power we know that much, but what is this power being put towards
I think there is only really one possible answer which is this,
Filianore prevents time from passing, we know this because,
Disturbing her doesn't just dispel a simple illusion
It actually brings us forward in time to the Ringed City which has fallen to ash
To Gael, with his rusted and broken weapons in hand
to the Pygmy lords the blood of the dark soul dried in their veins and
Back to Filianore, dead and withered perhaps at the moment where her faith or her power
Finally gave out, so we've done our best to
Establish the power by which Filianore holds back time, but what is she manipulating? What does she have control over with this power?
Well, it's possible that she's manipulating light because light
equals time
according to the repair Sorcery which assumedly uses light to
Reverse time upon your weapons, the foundations of this spell are a well guarded secret,
for light is time and the reversal of its effects is a forbidden art.
If Filianore is indeed manipulating light to keep the Ringed City locked in time
Then you can kind of understand why this Magic would be both
forbidden and a well guarded secret, the gods would not want this power nor this
secret being used elsewhere
Light sorceries like repair which we just mentioned
hail from the Lost land of Oolacile
Which must have existed when the Ringed City was still in its prime,
because the two cities are connected by two characters
Who appeared who have moved from one to the other
two characters Halflight and Manus, let's talk about Halflight
A missionary is someone who is sent on a religious mission
and Halflight was one such missionary sent from an ancient land of sorcery which was obviously Oolacile
But he elected to stay behind in the Ringed City
Becoming the last recorded spear of the church
So this must have been before the two cities encountered hardship
And the two cities, when we visit them anyway, definitely are overrun
As for the second character linking the two places together,
I want to convince you that Manus is at least a pygmy and
Potentially even the furtive pygmy may be from the Ringed City
The locust says this:
"One met the Dark with learning, but in the end learned his knowledge was wanting.
The world began without knowledge, and without knowledge will it end."
And according to the white Birch bow description before its description was changed in a patch
it used to read "The bow is a relic from the land of an old sorcerer who was swallowed by the abyss
and known for his role in the heroic tale of the Abysswalker"
The only possible character known for his role in the tale of the Abysswalker'
Who could possibly be an old Sorcerer, is Manus, which lines up with the fact that his weapon is indeed a catalyst
Thus Manus, who is called primeval man by Kaathe is three things at once
Manus is he who met the dark with knowledge when the world began
Manus is an old sorcerer who was swallowed by the abyss
And Manus most importantly is primeval man also known as a pygmy Lord
There's a story here, but we can only imagine it. It's a story of how a pygmy lord
left the Ringed City and settled in Oolacile
and eventually spread his abyss to the outside world.
I'm going to quickfire a few other curiosities that I've found and you can follow these up in the description.
First, Ludleth may actually be a pygmy in the literal sense
This may well be something that the Japanese community has known for a long time because the line
"I may be small but I will die a colossus"
More literally translates to in Japanese "Even this pygmy here was honored to become a lord"
This raises interesting implications when you consider that Ludleth was exiled for the forbidden art of soul transposition
And consider also that Filianore's vagrant like shell
clearly contains a transposing kiln in the design works concept art.
So could the Ringed City in fact be Courland and was Ludleth exiled from there?
Reddit user Westby has a great little thread that goes into more detail
and in a point raised by Machi who's one of our new resident translators
Ludleth being a pygmy around since the very dawn of the world
certainly explains how he would have knowledge of the first Fire keeper, whoever she might have been.
Because the eyes that we find in the untended graves are the eyes of the first Fire keeper
and Ludleth has dialogue about them saying that they reveal a frightful betrayal
and that they reveal a light that was lost by all fire keepers to come after this fire keeper
I've read that some have put forward that Filianore was the first fire keeper
And I can see that, she is blind, she's presumably missing eyes and like a fire keeper
she hold the darkness within her because darkness seeps from where her eye should be
and if Ludleth is indeed from here, then he should know of her. So that lines up pretty well
But all that said I'm not completely convinced about that
I mean the eyes are found on the corpse of another fire keeper
And while I supposed that they could be passed down from Filianore,
should Filianore's eyes really reveal such a generic ending of the fire?
The world we see in Filianore's future is more of an end of the world not just the end of light
So as you might have gathered souls may well be over, but we're not done here
Also before I go. I am probably going to be in Japan by the time you see this video. Which is amazing
So I'm actually going to do a little travel blog or at least try to
About everywhere I've been, or the food I've eaten and all that sort of thing
So if you're interested into more of a window into my life, which I know is pretty Sparse on this channel
Then I'm just going to do this for Patrons
so if you want to consider becoming one of them you'll be doing that on behalf of
everyone who watches my videos and you get to see a little bit of
what I'm going to be doing in Japan if that's interesting to you
it'll give me something to do while the other side of my mind is like crying that I'm not making videos and
Yeah, I kind of need to be creating something to make that anxiety go away, but thank you regardless
Thank you for watching and thank you for being the 1% listening at the end of the video and I'll see you next time