Demon souls begins with the old one, an eldritch great one, descending upon the earth.
Once awakened it inspires a hierarchy of demons dedicated to the retrieval of every soul
in exchange for great power.
In the evil ending, deep below the Nexus every soul is given to the old one and a great fog blankets the world.
Eons later, deep below a gray land, covered in fog
four hollow beings discover an immense amount of souls
and the story of Dark Souls begins.
The fog is dispersed,
civilization is reborn
and Souls flourish anew.
However, the irrevocable poison of the old one persists.
And eventually humanity looks for an escape from this cursed world.
They find a way out through a painted world of blood
and as the tale of blood-borne begins
Humanity creeps ever closer to the eldritch truth that they've forgotten,
strengthened by the echoes of the past, found within the blood.
This is an argument for the shared timeline of the souls borne universe.
And I'll be honest it's kind of a lesson in how easy it can be to push an entertaining theory.
Just as long as you cherry-pick only the evidence that suits your narrative.
It's really dishonest to tell a story in that way.
But it is a lot of fun.
So from your perspective, I hope it's interesting for you to sort of try and find
the gaps that I'm leaving in my logic
First let's establish that the old one is a great one from Lovecraftian fiction.
so the great ones as described by HP Lovecraft
Are cosmic deities that are so inconceivable and horrific
to humanity that they often shatter the minds of those who encounter them.
As an example of this let me introduce you
to these renditions of Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath
both of whom are very similar in some ways to the old one of demon souls.
So Azathoth is commonly called the nuclear chaos,
the blind idiot God, who resides at the center of the universe.
He rules all time and space,
yet his chaotic and really unpredictable, Idiotic nature
inspires this fear, that he could accidentally bring about the end of the world at any time.
According to Lovecraft, Azathoth is lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute.
And many writers of Lovecraftian fiction take this music
as an attempt to soothe Azathoth and his chaos into a dormant lulled state.
Similarly, of course, the old one of demon souls also appears to lack intelligence.
It's also wholly capable of bringing about the end of the world.
As the last time it was awakened, it erased half the world in fog
this world was only saved by the efforts of the Monumentals
who lulled the great one back to slumber and set about preserving the fabric of reality
That remained.
Sound familiar?
Consider also Shub-niggurath
Mother of a thousand young, who is depicted as this great floating entity made of mouths,
who is depicted as this great, floating entity made of mouths,
tentacles, and lesser creatures that emerge from its body.
This being is the subject of a lot of worship and in fact it consumes its most worthy
Worshipers and then spits them out as an immortal being.
This is not unlike our widely worshipped old one.
Which is also a great floating entity which spawned all of demon kind
And one who consumes the slayer of demons at the end of the game, in return for great power.
In addition, like many of Blood Bones great ones, the old one comes from the ocean.
Not only that, but like Lovecraft's great ones the old ones very nature cannot be fathomed by the living.
Finally there's a place called Latria in Demon Souls,
which you should remember from your PTSD, if you've played the game and
Latria is actually a theological term for worship. In this place many have been evolved to a
Higher state of being thanks to their proximity to their God, whom it is revealed, is the old one.
And a lot of these transformations are definitely Lovecraftian in style.
So, while I don't recommend you buy into this shared Timeline theory that I'm peddling
One thing you absolutely can take from this
is just how far back From Software's Lovecraftian inspirations go.
It's the cosmic horror of the old one that makes it such a great antagonist for demon souls, one-hundret percent!
And once it lures you to its side, in the evil ending, when all souls have been channeled into this
unfathomable deposit of energy when a grey, deep fog envelops the world
We have the perfect transition into the Dark Souls universe,
where millennia later it's easy to imagine latent hollows
Stumbling upon these souls of Lords deep below the earth
These souls from the old one have combusted, to create the first flame
And when you think about it the body of the old one would have made
for fantastic kindling so these four husks inherit the condensed souls of the old one deep below the earth.
And with these they dispel the gray fog that's above them.
Because a soul, after all, as defined by the monumental is the essence with which living things
comprehend the world around them.
Fog actually represents a lack of clarity and with souls
Hollows are granted the clarity to pierce the fog.
Demon Souls actually has one of the best and only
definitions of the concepts of souls and fog in the souls universe
and so a new world is created by the Lords.
And the structure of this world is really similar to the world of demon souls.
A Core law of the world is that the strong will always dominate the weak and souls will naturally
Coalesce towards powerful entities as a result of this.
The chosen Undead, the bearer of the curse, the ashen one,
every iteration of this world moves towards a state of entropy where all the souls are held by one being.
Just like it did in Demon Souls
This process is assisted by a maiden , who's able to channel Souls in every game.
Perhaps it's no surprise that these maidens began to obscure their sight
and dress in black over time just like their ancestor once did.
Notice how this new world also retains the twin arts of miracles and sorcery and just like in Demon Souls
It's rumored that both these arts share the same source.
In demon souls for example the talisman of beasts reveals, that both miracles and
Sorceries draw upon the power of the old one and in Dark Souls there are items like velka's talisman
Which reveal that miracles can indeed be cast with intelligence alone
and sorceries paradoxically with faith.
You might ask:
"What is pyromancy, then?" and even demon souls explains that because
Demon Souls had flame sorcery and Dark Souls mentions that flame sorcery was once a thing.
And of course, at the core of Dark Souls is the curse.
In every age there's this effort to gain insight into this cursed existence.
As kings and scholars both attempt to look deeper into souls
for answers and an escape.
However
"The soul and the curse are one in the same" The soul is the curse.
The Curse is irrevocably tied to the soul, reminding us
of a certain poison, that was placed upon the earth millennia ago.
On the first day mankind was granted a soul and on the second, upon earth was planted an irrevocable poison.
A soul-devouring demon.
The curse is characterized by being soul-devouring and the old ones poison is irrevocable
Just like the curse
And I think that when it consumed every soul in demon souls
For the lords to eventually absorb at the start of Dark Souls
it became an inseparable part of souls themselves.
A curse.
A poison.
The only thing that transcends the soul and the poison of the old one
Is whatever God placed them there on the first and second day of creation.
And so if one wants answers, one would have the glance towards the heavens.
So as we move towards Bloodborne, consider Chester of Oolacile
He's dressed in a hunter's attire. He has rose daggers that cause bleeding
and he also favors a crossbow, in a world without guns.
Chester looks like he belongs in Yharnam, not Oolacile.
Indeed, perhaps he's proof that yharnam is what the future holds.
hmm
"Let me guess. Snatched by a shadowy limb and dragged off to the past?
Yes, of course exactly what happened to me. We are both strangers in this strange land."
So if blood-borne takes place in the future how did the inhabitants of this world get there?
How did they escape the curse of their own Souls?
And the answer, as characters in souls slowly began to realize,
was blood.
A substance which is mentioned more and more as the series progresses
Get this in Dark Souls 2 the drake blood knights began to worship the blood of dragons
which they believed would allow them to understand life and transcend existence
Concepts that are very familiar to Bloodborne players.
In Dark Souls 3 the sacred blood of the wolf was spread amongst the abyss watchers
And their souls became one, with the soul of the wolfblood master.
It's our first sign that blood is sort of a vessel for souls and the curse.
In ashes of Ariandelle we see Bloods ability to appease the flame, just like a soul would.
And in the ringed City the primal link to blood is confirmed, with gales consumption of the blood of the Dark Soul
And its subsequent retrieval for the creation of Arias painting.
So Vendrick believed that the answer to the curse lay within the soul itself,
But in reality to escape we would have to understand that blood is a powerful human defining resource,
iust like souls are.
And so, with the world painted with the most primal blood imaginable
humanity separates their cursed Souls from the blood, leaving the old ones poison behind, and
escaping the world of Dark Souls,
traveling or born by blood to a new world, but they can become closer to the insight that they crave.
Symbolically Yanam ends up being built above the chalice dungeons below
and many of these contain knights in plate armor.
from the medieval times of demons and Dark Souls.
In this world of Bloodborne blood alone contains the powerful echoes of the past
and the concept of a soul no longer exists.
Hence the curse no longer exists.
Humanity, now relying on blood, instead of the souls that they left behind,
has escaped the irrevocable poison of the old one.
But they remain under the influence of great ones, just like it.
Similar to how Demon Souls revolves directly around the old one,
The story of Bloodborne revolves directly around the revelations about the great ones
many of which can be extended to the old one as well.
The motivations of these elder beings are mysterious and they're incomprehensible to mankind.
Except for one thing,
childbirth.
The great ones crave children,
yet paradoxically their children are always destined to die.
To solve this problem they often have surrogate children, through humans
Viewed in this way the old one is no different to the great ones in Bloodborne.
Think about it
It's an entity with the goal of grooming a child called a slayer of demons
and the old one itself had to die as well
In order for its poison to survive
Interestingly there is an undeniable link to demon souls that ended up being cut from Bloodborne early in development.
In the word Umbasa.
In Demon Souls umbasa was a word of reverence that was often spoken by priests and miracle users.
Listen to Gascoigne's dialogue, which was present in the network test
Sick creature, may you rest in peace
Umbasa.
And to this random Yharnamite, extracted from the game's files, only recently.
"Give your blessing and wash from us the blood of beasts. Umbasa."
The use of this word hints at a rediscovery of a god that was introduced in Demon Souls
and lost in Dark Souls. A God that granted humans a soul
But also granted them the poison of the old one
This was a litany of stories that eventually ended in the Ascension of mankind in Bloodborne ,
To a new eldritch childhood
where they are finally on even footing, with the so-called gods, that started it all.
That does it for this video, which is probably like one of the most bizarre things
I've ever made on this channel, because it was a strange experience for me
I just tried my hardest to sell you on something I don't really believe.
And I ignored my logic a lot of the time when writing this script, in order to sell it to you better.
Did you think I was successful, did I fail?
Did you notice any difference, compared to my other videos?
I'd love to see you rip apart this theory in the comments. Please, go ahead.
Remember this was the most voted for video by patrons a couple of months ago,
and I hope I delivered for you guys.
So thanks to all of you guys, who supported my channel back then, and now.
It's incredibly heartening to still have so many of you
Giving a couple of dollars to support something you love.
I'll keep doing this and I'll see you next time.