Eight interesting stories from Dark
Souls lore. By Joe Donnelly
LORDRAN
CALLING
P
erhaps the most
interesting thing
about Dark Souls lore
is its ambiguity.
Cutscenes are scant,
and your main source of story
signposting comes from item
descriptions and vague backstories
drip-fed by its NPCs.
Everything is open to interpretation,
then, and in a circular world that’s
doomed to repeat itself, crossover
between series instalments is
inevitable. With all of that in mind,
here’s a collection of easily
overlooked Souls lore stories, away
from its mandatory bosses and
central nomads.GRIGGS OF VINHEIM AND HIS
SEARCH FOR BIG HAT LOGAN
Griggs of Vinheim – trapped in the
Undead Burg and packing an array of
sorcery spells – marks our first
insight into the complicated
relationship the Souls world shares
with magic. Griggs is searching for
Big Hat Logan, a legendary sorcerer
he claims is his master.
Griggs will teach you about Soul
Arts for the right price. Once you’ve
learned everything he knows, you can
reveal that you’ve already met Logan
yourself, and know he’s headed to the
Duke’s Archives to study sorcery at
the home of master magician Seath
the Scaleless. You send Griggs on his
way, but later you can find him
absentmindedly roaming the halls
of Sen’s Fortress, hollowed and
hostile. Poor blighter. A rummage
through his possessions suggests he
was in fact a spy from the Vinheim
Dragon School who was tracking,
yup, Big Hat Logan.BIG HAT
LOGAN’S
DESCENT INTO
MADNESS
You first meet esteemed sorcerer
Big Hat Logan imprisoned in Sen’s
Fortress, and, assuming you see his
quest through to completion, last
encounter him wearing nothing
but his signature oversized cap and
a pair of pants, raving mad and
trying to kill you.
An interesting fellow who
becomes so obsessed with
mastering the Soul Arts that he
drives himself insane. His
cautionary tale leads him to the
Duke’s Archives and shines a light
on both the power and peril of
harnessing magic in Lordran. The
penultimate rendezvous with
Logan is the most unsettling,
whereby he intermittently slips in
and out of coherent thought. Grim.LAURENTIUS OF THE GREAT SWAMP AND
QUELANA OF IZALITH
Similar to Griggs, Laurentius is a travelling magician
whose story overlaps with the creators of pyro magic- the Witch of Izalith and her seven Daughters of
Chaos. One of the Daughters, Quelana, is the only
trainer in Dark Souls that can max out the Pyromancy
Flame, and can only be unlocked once you’ve
exhausted Laurentius’ teachings.
In his attempt to locate her in Blighttown, poor
Laurentius turns hollow. It’s possible to finish Dark
Souls without meeting Quelana, but you should to hear
the wealth of interesting titbits about her family, such
as their obsession with recreating the First Flame,
reinstating the Age of Fire, and in turn reclaiming their
rule over Lordran. All of which is, of course, in vain.
Quelana explains how this power-hungry plight has
instead warped her siblings into mindless monsters,
which sort of humanises the hulking beasts you’ll fight
down the line – a rare thing in the Souls universe.
FEATURE
TRAGEDY I PR ANK I LORE I INVADE I FA SH ION