"Where have you gone, sweet child? It's cold outside. It's awfully cold.
Where have you run off to?
I'm here sweet child, right here.
You're cold and you have no place to go.
You're mine, sweet child. All mine.
So run home, sweet child, run home.
You know you have no place to go."
This piece of missing dialogue almost certainly belongs to the crawling tree, who was unique amongst all her sisters.
For, as you approach, in-game, you can hear her weep.
*soft crying*
And it's this same sound present in the missing dialogue you just heard.
So we're left wondering, who then is her sweet child with no place to go?
Guarded by the tree is Snap Freeze, one of the two spells left behind by the young sorcerer Sulyvahn.
It reads, "Sulyvahn was born and raised inside the painting, yet had little use for his frigid homeland, since he had not yet experienced loss."
This references his birth, his upbringing, and all that next to a tree that talks about a sweet child who has disappeared.
Of course, it doesn't all add up.
It doesn't make sense that the tree is outside yet talks about it being cold outside.
It doesn't make sense that items say, "Sulyvahn has no place to go", yet the tree tells him to run home.
I'll be honest - I just wanted a segway to talk about Sulyvahn because we didn't actually get a chance to talk about him in the previous videos
We learn a little bit more about him in the painting, and I think it might help us understand the man he became.
For the painted world is essentially one big mirror to the linking of the fire
so it's no surprise that Sulyvahn may have been quick to grasp the nature of the outside world.
Within the painting, the residents pride themselves on their ability to paint a new world once their existing world has fallen to rot.
And in a way, Sulyvahn sets out to do that same thing on the outside.
The outside, too... it's rotting to these endless ages of fire.
And Sulyvahn does fight against that in a way, because he joins forces with Aldrich, this being who has dreamt of an end to the age of fire,
and of the beginning of the age of the Deep Sea. We'll get to that in a second.
Going back to the painting... while he was there, Sulyvahn was classed as a young sorcerer
with sorceries that were clearly inspired by his homeland.
However, the items read, "Ironically, he did not belong in this place of belonging, as he had not yet experienced loss, unlike the others in the painting."
So he left for a similar environment, but a different world.
Irithyll, located in the Boreal Valley, was where he discovered the Profaned Flame deep below,
where he found his ambition - where he became the Pontiff.
Eventually usurping the old gods from Anor Lando, and eventually taking the frozen city for his own.
He then goes on to provide refuge for Aldrich, a Lord of Cinder who abandoned his duty to link the fire,
and even offers him Gwendolyn, a god of the old royalty, to devour.
And I think knowing his origins flesh out the character a little bit more.
They help us understand the man who settled in Irithyll – why he might have rejected the rotten linking of the fire,
and eventually how he probably wanted to be a part of a new world, just like the Corvians of the painting.
Moving on.
This is a texture of the murals in Ariandel, courtesy of @MennoBarten on Twitter.
Now Jake, The Ashen Hollow, managed to find some hidden text in this texture.
I’m gonna give you a few seconds, and see if you can find it, too.
It’s here.
Forgive my pronunciation, but *slaughtered japanese* roughly translates to, “Stabber and Crusher.”
Stabber and Crusher. Thanks to our resident translator Loremaster Nojah once again for that.
So the discovery of this collaborative treasure hunt is that the two figures are clearly called Stabber and Crusher,
perhaps internally by From Software, which is probably not intended for our knowledge to be honest.
You’d think it’s just their name, but it reveals that the act of stabbing and crushing might be an important part of the mural,
as well as making it clear that what they’re stabbing and what they’re crushing is alive.
Which is very significant because it essentially confirms to me that the two white things are most likely snakes, as you guys suggested in an earlier video.
Because why would you stab or crush something that’s not living, right?
Plus, there are two entwined serpents engraved upon the doors to the chapel.
So three questions arise for me:
What are the snakes? Who are the figures, and why are they stabbing and crushing the snakes?
The snakes are most likely primordial serpents.
It fits best, because there are two here, and because these two snakes would line up perfectly with the two prominent primordial serpents in the game:
Kaathe and Frampt, who both represented a side of linking the fire in Dark Souls 1.
Frampt pushed you to sacrifice yourself for the flame, and Kaathe wanted you to watch it die. He wanted you to usher in the next age of man.
And these two snakes, and light and dark, they’re always entwined somehow, just like the two on the door.
And it does make some sense for these two serpents to be represented in Ariandel, for this is the DLC where Miyazaki has attempted to display the linking of the fire from another perspective.
So now, who are the figures, both of whom are fairly feminine?
I’d like to say that they are the two other sisters of the Sable Church, Frieda being the third, but as we’ve already seen two other sisters,
and we know that their masks don’t look anything like this, that assumption definitely comes with some contradictions.
So, I personally think that, as of yet, they are unmentioned characters in the game.
Their defining characteristics are one has a straight thin sword, another has an embered arm reaching down to the snakes coming from the dark,
who are likely the primordial serpents. Hollows enwreathed in flame reach out towards them…
for help, perhaps? In this pose that is so familiar to other praying hollows in the game.
And if these are primordial serpents, that makes these two characters huge by comparison, and probably powerful, too.
And the third question: why are they stabbing and crushing the snakes?
Well, if we assume that the snakes are Kaathe and Frampt, then killing them might represent animosity for the linking of the fire,
which is something that both Kaathe and Frampt represent in a way, as each serpent pushes you to either link the fire or usurp it.
And Friede is unkindled – she is someone who failed to link or usurp the fire, and she fled to the painting after that failure.
In my opinion, she’d be quite okay with the deaths of Frampt or Kaathe, and the depiction of them within this place makes a bit of sense with that context.
Of course, just because I’ve mentioned the most likely explanations, doesn’t mean it’s right.
Next, the woman in the tens of paintings scattered around Friede’s chamber.
I think it’s clear that it's Friede herself depicted, as the location and the pose is the same as where and how she sits in real life – hands clasped, with a round table by her side.
It’s like she’s posing for these pictures, which were presumably done by the painter upstairs.
But why have so many done?
Well, there is something special about the paintings made by the painter, since she is responsible for creating the next world.
Maybe Friede wanted to affirm her position here in this world with a bit of the painter’s power. But we know she sent this painter away eventually.
Maybe she wasn’t happy with her depiction in these works.
Maybe it has something to do with the fire that encroaches around the edges of each painting.
The fire was unavoidably linked to Friede, no matter how much she despised it, she couldn’t separate herself from it in the end.
In one picture in particular, Friede holds a tablet in her bandaged hands with a knight depicted upon it.
This knight has a helm that’s unlike anything we’ve seen in-game, but it also has what looks like the woolen pauldrons of the Faraam set,
and what looks like the plume of the Nameless King behind it.
I’m reaching here.
Those two things are related to each other, but I’m still reaching.
We were never meant to look this closely at this mystery knight, I think, so for now, I guess I will just keep an eye out for anything looking like this in the future.
Although, it does bring to mind Yuria’s dialog saying that we should remember those that stayed by Friede’s side until the very end.
I think it would make more sense for Vilhelm to be depicted in this picture rather than this mystery knight, but that’s just my take.
Finally, the textures reveal a burn on Friede’s face, and along with the bandages in the paintings that are around her hands;
maybe these are burn marks from linking the fire and failing, perhaps?
More questions remain that might never get answered.
Questions like, “What is the Abyss Dragon mentioned in the downfall of the Millwood Knights?”
“What is the snake statue hidden at the back of Ariandel’s chamber?” and
“What is the Dark Soul of Man?” which is the biggest cliff-hanger a piece of DLC has ever left us on.
I think as From prepares their final piece of DLC for the Dark Souls series, and as it increasingly looks like we’re going to visit a city of hollows,
I think that we are going to have to come to term with the fact that we may never have these questions answered for sure.
But regardless, it’s been damn fun speculating.
And, just before I go, I wanna say that we actually have more of a community starting over on Patreon right now,
so everyone who gives a dollar now has access to the Discord channel, which has been so much fun!
There’s a place you can show off your art, like Emily Hickinson’s work you can see here.
There’s general discussion, there’s lore discussion, you can link music, pictures...
If you’re looking for a Dark Souls community to be a part of, I’m having a blast with this.
And I’m adding a few more perks, too, so five dollar patrons can now be polled to help me decide what direction to take the channel,
and I’ve even started to upload the notes that I make my videos based off, which are for Beacon patrons.
These notes have color-coded research on dialogue, item descriptions, environments, and
basically if you want access to the rough unedited core of my videos, then this tier might be interesting to you.
But thank you for supporting me, whether you’re a patron, or you’re not a patron, it’s all good!
Thank you for watching this, and I’ll see you next time!