In retrospect, it was a mistake not to make a point of mentioning Titanite Demons in the video, which are another example of an inanimate object spontaneously becoming a demon after being neglected for an indeterminate amount of time. This is a theory I came up with a few years ago, when I was thinking about all the different ways demons are shown to be created throughout the series. Drawing the connection between the one-off mention of a magic ring spawning a demon in Dark Souls 1 to a demon whose soul transposes for a ring in Dark Souls 3 felt like stumbling onto the first of a very deliberately placed series of hints, supported by the nearby Havel knight's corpse. It may be overthinking things, but it also seems exactly the sort of thing From Software would do. Your prize for expanding this comment is an invitation to the havel gang: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uWCRvZ4ZzJI.html
Speaking of the Centipede Demon, I've always interpreted it to be the Ceaseless Discharge's Left arm that fell off and came alive, which is why his ring is in it. Leaving the right arm to cradle the stump and fuse to the shoulder, which is why he has to rip it off to hit you with it.
Dark Souls 3 timeline is really screwed up. This theory is a bit like Artoria's Story or Last Giant. 1. -Both you must be taken back to the past. 2.- To slay some entity that sucks ass. 3.-Then find out later, that time is convoluted, and time travels exist because you touched something. 4.-He's the most ashen guy you've ever heard. 5-.He's the angry, Dark Souls 3 miner.
Something to note in Japanese myth that I believe also plays into this: it's often a semi-common thread for objects to have their own spirit after a century, and the disposition of that spirit is determined by the treatment and experience of the item. Something well taken care of will be kind, whereas something abandoned or used in bloodshed will often be angry and violent!
So like what if you made a prosthetic limb, but then it was used by assassins who just relentlessly murdered people and even came with special techniques using the prosthetic to kill them even more effectively?
It's likely related to the Apparition system of Shinto. No matter how hard you try, humans always assign personality and individuality to things that aren't human. It can be both conscious and unconscious. That's how a lot of Japanese apparitions come into existence: Faith. You believe in something and it becomes real depending on the intensity of your essence and the amount of people who believe in it.
@@speedb.bernard5404 Demons can be created FROM items but not BY items. They need the flame of chaos to get life. The stray demon was a fire demon before losing its flame from old age. He wasn't born in its rock form. He doesn't come from the ring of havel.
@@user-pc3nc3hg6w I see your point but we don't realy know how long ago the havel died at all and I really the only way to explain it with out writing it off to game logic (wich it prob is)
Hm however I'm tempted to believe that this is more of a regular demon boi considering the description of his soul. "The Stray Demon, now lacking even a trace of flame, was once the gatekeeper of Lothric."
We don't know from when exactly in the past the Havel Knight was summoned, though, so I think it's possible for the demon to be simultaneously a byproduct of the ring and a gatekeeper of Lothric.
Could you investigate the "quiet room" outside the Ruin Sentinels boss fight? I call it such because for some reason striking the walls in this room results in no impact effects or sound being made. Instead you hear the usual "whoosh" effect when you swing your weapon. Arrows and thorwing knives disappear through the wall. Same thing with the walls upstairs if you take the ladder. I assume this is intended since the sorcery Hush is found here, but I'm wondering if you could find out any further info.Thanks for the all great content Edit: I forgot to add, ambient noise is also reduced when entering the room.
@@thatwasme7197 there are several illusory walls in the boss room: one with a ladder to some items in the upper floor and another illusory wall, some in the bottom floor with items or with nothing, and the one you use to exit the boss room with an staircase. Up there is other illusory wall with a chest and a exploding guy, outside of that is the path to the bonfire. Which of those rooms is the one with weird walls?
In dark souls 1 there was a running idea that misplaced magical items eventually turn whole area around them into shit. For example, the reason why Blighttown swamp was poisonous shithole? Engiy, once a great pyromancer and now an egghead simp of his queen, threw his pyromancy tome into the swamp. Said pyro tome contained some of the poisonous pyromancies, and with time, the whole water in Blighttown became poisonous. Later Souls kinda moved away from this idea, thrown away magic items are now just treasures waiting to be found and not an improperly handled nuclear waste.
@@manjackson2772 i think it was in the description of Poison Mist pyromancy before remastered edition changed it. I remember something along the lines of "and he threw his pyromancy into the swamp". You can also find that pyromancy exactly in the swamp area.
I feel like every time the fire is linked it causes the souls to be burned. Meaning that there are less souls for the next cycle and so on and so on. Maybe these items that are created by powerful beings become less powerful depending on who is wielding them. Or that the power of the itemsDecrease over a set period of time.
The Poison and Toxic Mist pyromancies don't say anything like that in any of the descriptions. Blighttown is poisonous because its a giant sewage overspill.
Considering the original lore in DS1 where Havel may have been stashing occult weapons to use against the gods, there may be some deeper connections to demons there.
@@livingfailure I like the idea that Havel was framed, but what proof is there that mimics were created by Seath? The description of the Symbol of Avarice across all games implies they're the members of a clan that was punished for their greed, and that they are somehow related to a covetous god.
or the demon has nothing to do with him, and he really was ready to oppose the god and was actually planning to ally himself with the nameless king, that is why we find him or one of his soldiers in the Archdragon Peak.
The best thing about Fromsoft is never knowing if a super obscure lore connection is actually true or not- because they're more than willing to put this effort in, or to not put it in- then shrug and wink while everyone tries to finish the puzzle lol
@@Jenartikthey basically just toss smth down, put half a sentence of lore to explain why it’s there, then call it a day bc then they never have to be truly wrong or inconsistent.
This is why i love about From. They do some things without tought.... But then you get to very cryptic things that they actually aknowledge had a lot of tought put into them.... For example the origins of the original Firelink Shrine, wich everyone tought it was some random place the devs choose because it was the best place to put a and start the game at. And in the end they worked so much in making an ideal firelink shrine that the end result ended being one of the most unasuming places in the series. Lets be honest.... of all From Hubs. DS1 shrine is the only one that doesn't look like a hub at all.
@@Jenartik There actually is a reason. The creator of DS loved fantasy as a kid and started reading Lord of the Rings (as everyone should) but it wasn't translated into Japanese and he only had a very small grasp of reading English at the time.....so he was only getting about 70-75% of the story. For him it was intriguing as if it was this hidden lore right within his grasp but he could not decipher it. He ran with that for DS.
I was so upset about this too lol. I had already done about 4 new games/characters and I never knew this armor existed. Here is another armor you might have missed: The Drakeblood Knight armor, can be found inside the chamber that connects Oceiros' boss fight room with the Untended Graves. The armor only spawns here AFTER you defeat the Drakeblood Knight that gets summoned by those serpent creature sorcerers inside Archdragon Peak.
This is actually a cool idea. That lifeless objects can create life can also be seen in Dark Souls 1 with vagrants or titanite demons for some other examples. So that rings can spawn these demons seems reasonable enough for the world where they're in.
There is actually credibility in this. As stone flesh is a pyromancy, Havel could have lost control of his magic and it consumed him like the Witches of Izalith
The view on that bridge when you reach Farron Keep is actually really nice. Beautiful hues of green, orange or pink, and Yellow iirc. with a nice shot of the sun and sea.
One thing I wish that From did that you put in this video, was that the dead bodies that give up armor would actually be wearing that armor up until you claim it. It would also be nice if From also dressed up their corpses a bit more. Like give them generic weapons/shields/area-helpful consumables to be picked up as well, so it feels less like an armor drop and more like an adventurer died in that spot.
Would be cool following on from your idea if - in the spirit of the whole intertwined online worlds thing - when a player dies somewhere, with their bloodstain is left one item out of their inventory at random
Very intriguing however the soul of a stray demon says "The Stray Demon, now lacking even a trace of flame, was once the gatekeeper of Lothric." Now what you've brought up about the possible connection between the havel knight corpse is interesting because you may not be entirely wrong especially if we keep with the knight corpse going back to the past what we have is an old ring a once flaming demon and lothric which used to hunt dragons what better gatekeeper when your enemies breath fire than one who is immune to it now with that in mind the charred ring didn't spawn the demon it created out of contact with lava/chaos what I propose is that the demon killed the havel knight but due to its combination of an enchanted ring and chaos flame/lava it changes the innate demon based energy to better match the energy of the ring enchantment and shortly after the transformation lothric made peace with dragons and here the altered demon stands to be killed by the unkindled
Items turning into living creatures is kind of a trend in the dark souls games, in dark souls 1 dropping a random item on the ground will eventually turn it into a vagrant enemy in other peoples worlds
Oh, something interesting to look at might be "the Deep" within the Cathedral of the Deep. That one dark pool you can just see out of the balcony. I'd love to see how that connects to the surrounding landscape.
Sadly the demon's soul description states that it once had a flame and defended the gate of lothric before it rose. However, the dragonslayer armor and the cursed greatwood are examples of magical items gaining sentience.
Me: oh, thats cool, didn't find the armour tho. Zullie: it only appears when the havel knight is killed in archdrgaon peak Me: when the what is killed WHERE?
Also worth bringing up that there is a dragon corpse within spitting distance of the stray demon area, which could also be responsible for the Havel Knight's death
It completely blows my mind, after so many years, that people are still surprised and/or didn't knew about the Havel Armor or Drakeblood Armor in DS3, among other things.
the only flaw i may see in this (unless we want to bring in temporal anomalies and whatnot) is that the demon is there even before you kill the havel knight
I was actually just about to say the same thing. I can believe the body is somehow linked to the knight you kill at Archdragon peak. Lore for a DS game can be so subtle that it could even be From just decided it would be a cool place to hide the armor since it's by dead dragons and a demon.
This is very interesting and sounds so damn interesting but it falls apart from the fact that the stray demon is there without you having killed the havel knight. A small correction would be that the knight lost his ring in that bridge (maybe he was fighting the dead dragon at the other side) on his way to the other dead dragon (coincidence?)
I know that 3 months later but I just watch the video. I was wondering exactly what you said, because in my first run I did not beat Havel first, I killed the demon first at the bridge. And Havel’s set was not there but the ring after kill the demon. It’s just doesn’t make sense even the argument has an internal consistency.
You know, it's pretty incredible, that you find and showcase so many details about these games, despite how old they already are. Thank you for this. I learn so much on this channel about my favourite games. Somehow I never made a connection between the demon, the fact that his soul contains Havel's ring and that you find Havel's armor in the same spot...a knight armored with stone and a demon that throws up stone. Though I gotta say, the demon could be a bit more polite to us, the guy who basically gave birth to it.
One minor quibble, I believe the lore says that Havel did NOT wear the ring as he was strong enough without it. It was made for his knights. That being said I enjoyed the rest of the theory thoroughly.
This demon, was probably a havel knight who got transformed into a demon by something. It had flame to it when it first got transformed, but when the demons equivalent of the first flame was weakened and nearly extinguished this demon lost its fire. It was a Havel Knight once upon a time, so it probably didn't mind being Lothrics Gatekeeper and killing that Wyvern.
Havel maybe escape Watchtower and walk across Lordran to Lost Izalith and get transformed by Chaos Flame(some how?) But he learn the Path of the Dragon Gesture to get to Archdragon Peak ???
@@tossapat027 You havent got it quite right.Lordran doesnt exist in that way in DS3 and its not the Havel from the watchtower,Its some dude wearing the same armor.And as we know from DS2 (Its unpopular but still kinda cannon) Demons are born out of Chaos,so an Inanimate Object,or Creature can Transform into a Demon at nearly any Time.So there is a Possibility that Havel Knight went Hollow/Died and either He or his ring got Transformed into the Ring.He never went to Izalith because he never had to and never went to Archdragon Peak because he never had to either.He just got summoned by the Snake-Hag
Hundreds of hours in this game and I never knew you could get Havel's from this location. I guess that happens if you don't loot the Havel knight at Archdragon Peak?
This is a lovely theory, and to add a bit to it, this reasoning may be why this stray demon is so dim colored. Instead of being created by a ring connected to Izalith, it was created by a rock ring, and so the demon is rocky. Just one more thing that I believe makes this theory more believable and cool. Anyway, thanks Zullie for showing this off! Edit: woops, almost forgot that this demon also vomits rocks onto you right? I'm just going from memory but this theory seems to make more and more sense. Exciting!
Unfortunately the description of the Stray Demon's soul kinda disproves this. It says he was a gatekeeper of Lothric, meaning that he was around when the bridge was still used, meaning that he definitely didn't come from a corpse that got left behind. They built and trafficked the bridge, they wouldn't have left the corpse there long enough for it to turn into a demon.
Hey Zullie. Just wanted to commend you for your awesome work and still continuing to put forth great content. I remember when it was just people like yourself, Illusorywall, and ENB that explored this series, and I will forever be grateful for your efforts. Heres to another decade of exploration! May your channel and reputation grow with Elden Ring.❤️❤️❤️❤️
Isnt the whole thing of the Havel Knights that they hate any kind of Dragon?So a Havel going to Lothric Castle in wich nearly everyone is obsessed with Dragons wouldnt seem like a thing they do
That reminds me, what's the difference between a demon's ruin Capra Demon and the boss fight one? Much like the Taurus demon, they are both able to walk on lave but somehow fire deals more damage during their boss fight. Is there a difference between both bosses and their normal enemy counter part?
I was wondering that too. The boss fight seems bigger and more aggressive than the ones in the Demons Ruins. Of course I may just have PTSD from that boss fight.
Remember, nowhere is it stated that the Havel Armour was ever worn by Havel personally. It just says his followers wore it. I doubt the "Havel" locked in the tower in DS1 was necessarily the one and only Havel.
But if the corpse of the Havel Knight existing depends on you killing him, does that not also mean that the Stray Demon should not exist until after you have killed the Havel knight?
Kind of, yeah, but there's a strange sort of non-linear personal experience of time going on in the Souls games. It's kind of like how, if you kill Sif and then meet Sif in the DLC, then technically the cutscene you saw when you killed Sif doesn't make sense anymore, because you should've seen the one where Sif remembers you from the past, but the game had no way of establishing that because it couldn't know you were going to do the DLC for sure after. The demon always having been there regardless of your actions could be in kind of a similarly weird spot.
Although that specific situation seems more to be a practical consideration, in that it would be impossible for FromSoft to know whether or not you are going to visit the DLC in future... is there any other time travel weirdness in the series? There must be right
Huh. That actually kind of makes sense, given Soulsborne lore. Thank you Zullie! Another excellent video that makes me think back to all of those Dark souls questions that I never figured out.. one day I WILL figure out just what created those goblin-looking weirdos from DS2... because they can't just be normal old hollows...
Vaati must be proud of the quality of your research and videos. I'm very impressed with the level of observation you give to this games, thank you for this.
This is the most reasonable sounding theory I've heard about any DS lore in a long time. Nice ideas! I wonder if we can take this concept and illuminate any other plot points in the series. Nothing springs to mind at the moment, but I'll keep mulling things over.
Zullie, I gotta say I am really proud of you for these awesome lil videos. You've stayed really persistent over your time on youtube and it finally paid off. Your content is short and sweet but informative and entertaining, your thumbnails work perfectly both standalone and with the titles, and your knowledge on the souls series remains impeccable. I really think you are one of the few youtubers who could fall to the corruption of fame. Keep at it ya loveable nerd
damn, I just thought that demon ran out of flames being Stray and all, I havent much about demon lores from DS1 so this is an amazing discovery for me.. The Stray Demon is always my checkpoint whenever I'm choosing to go Watchers or proceed to the Painting thru the Cathedral, so this miniboss is always part of my strat.. Thank you, Zullie, you never fail to amaze us. Btw, there's a manga about Souls.. The first one I read was about Havel vs Ledo and I read through all of it and I fucking love it. Wish we could have one long thorough visual depiction of the souls trilogy.. I'd die for that!
You may notice, Ceaseless Discharge is missing an arm. I believe that arm got severed somehow and that appendage (which was wearing the ring) fell to the lava below and eventually came to life. Or perhaps the limb developed a will of its own and tore itself loose.
This is now part of my head-canon. Love this theory! Connecting these bits to the orange-charred ring and Centipede demon is brilliant. Isn't there a dead dragon on the other part of that broken bridge? Perhaps the Havel knight was battling that dragon before he was summoners through time to be defeated by the player. Or perhaps the Havel knight was the gatekeeper and the stray demon inherited his sense of gate-keeping duty from his ring. Love this take on this stuff Zullie!
Rather than being a "rock demon" as such, I always thought this guy was previously a fire demon like the Demon Firesage, but the world is so old and decrepit by now that all his fire has burned out, and he is just an ashen husk. This fits with DSIII being so far along in Gwyn's cycle of rekindling that the flame is now extremely weak and the world is a tired and sickly hellscape as a result, with everything in it being long past its prime. This is a really good theory though, I love how open to interpretation these games are with no clear right and wrong a lot of the time. Isn't great art about interpreting it? Great vid!
