I felt like doing some writing, so I put together a quick list on some of my favorite Dark Souls characters. It was originally going to be a top 5, but then kept growing as I kept thinking of other characters that I liked, and frankly, I can't limit my favorites in this well thought out and developed series to just one list. So here are some of my favs, and I may add some later.
Keep in mind that these are in no particular order, save for the first.
Seigmeyer
In a world where everything is trying to kill you, and most of the people you meet have some ulterior motives, Seigmeyer is a true blue friend. Although suffering from the same blight of hollowing that plagues nearly every other human character, the knight from Catarina manages to keep his chin up and greet you with a hearty “hello,” no matter how big the pickle he’s in might be. And that goes a long way in a game that’s about retaining your humanity while everything is fading all around you: if people like Lautrec and Patches show how clinging to retaining your humanity leads to committing increasingly less humane acts, or Crestfallen, who simply decides to embrace despair and stop trying, Seigmeyer demonstrates that you don’t have to revoke your honor and compassion just because the going gets rough. And the going is certainly rough for Seigmeyer, who keeps running into walls that we have to bail him out of. And yet, that only makes me like him more, because his adventure is very similar to ours. Rather than just cruise through things, he runs into problems that he just can’t seem to find a way around, and sometimes sitting and puzzling out what to do is the only way to make it through. Sometimes, you need a summon or a Sun Bro to come in and give you that extra hand you need, albeit at the expense of some pride and accomplishment. Which eventually culminates to Seigmeyer feeling that he’s taken so much that he is honor bound to give back, and is more than willing to get himself killed by the Chaos Demons if it means that he can finally pay back his debt to you and let you get away. He will get no reward for doing so, obviously, but just want to help a friend, and that’s awfully touching (considering what happens to your other friend who is just a hallway away in Izalith).
Of course, it being Dark Souls, even if you do stop Seigmeyer from getting killed, it still doesn’t save him from probably the most tragic story in the game, and one of the few times in games that I still get a little misty eyed over.
King Vendrick
If Gwynn is Macbeth, who is hoisted up by his pride and felled by clinging to his fears, Vendrick is Leer, who loved too much only to be blinded to what was actually happening in his kingdom, and was then forced to watch it all fall apart. What I liked about Vendrick is how much is story is tied to that of our own. While Lordran is the creation of the gods, Drangleic is entirely man made, by a person who relied on his own strength, collected enough great souls to increase his power, and then built a kingdom based on things he believed in. It’s a neat transition from a world that is descended from everlasting dragons and gods to one that is made by mere mortals. But, as we go along our quest, we begin to see just how faulty the creations of the Dark Soul can be. Straid tells us that the Lost Bastille is from a kingdom long before Drangleic, but was built to try and combat the rising Undead epidemic. The Iron King is said to have led hunts against Hollows to try and fight them back, only to have those he employed go Hollow as well, and he himself defeated by his own hubris. Tseldora was consumed by the greed and aloofness of the Duke. All of the kingdoms we find time and time again have fallen and relinquished its power to the sands of time, and it becomes clear that anything that is built in this world is doomed to fall sooner or later.
It’s this looming, inevitable tragedy that makes Vendrick’s story so poignant. At the height of his power, he becomes infatuated with Nashandra, daughter of Manus, and is convinced that the only way to protect his kingdom is to challenge the Giants. What’s important is that his desire to declare war is fueled by a relatively humane desire to protect those under him, and to earn the love of someone he himself loves (even later, he still refers to his Queen as his dead Shandra). But in his confidence, he winds up waking up a wrath that neither he nor his legions could ever hope to combat, and the Giants run roughshod on everything he spent his life making, driving it to ruin. The Curse decides to return and begins to eat his kingdom from the inside. He becomes aware that Nashandra has been playing him in hopes of acquiring the First Flame for herself. And, after years of insight and studying of the soul, Vendrick is forced to concede that the return of the Curse, the coming of Dark, and the end of the age as they know it, has all been inevitable, and if it doesn’t end with him, it will do so later on. It’s this long, drawn out, soul crushing revelation that makes Vendrick so tragic to me: we’re told when we first start that he’s the king we should aspire to be, and as we slowly unravel the train wreck that is his existence, we not only feel pity for him, but also come to realize that we can apply the same level of despair to our own quest, if we choose to. The only thing that Vendrick could think of doing was to run and hide in the deepest parts of the earth, waiting alone for eternity, in hopes of trying to deny the Flame his soul to try and beat the cycle in the only way that he could, and even then, he can’t ultimately stop us, or someone else, from linking the Fire and starting everything anew. And although we, the player, naturally think of ourselves as somehow above all of this, Vendrick, who is not all that different from our character, forces us to recognize the unpleasant truths that loom before us, and makes us think: what makes a true monarch?
Seath the Scaleless
What’s interesting about Seath is how he was the only one of his race that was supposed to die, yet not only managed to outlive them all, but has managed to have an influence on the world of gods and men for centuries. The mad emotion of the pale dragon is always in juxtaposition with a surplus of rational knowledge. He is deeply jealous of his immortal brethren to the point of sacrificing all of them to Gwynn and the lords, which is only made possible by his studies and insight as to how destroying the dragons is even possible. The studies he makes after becoming a duke leads to the discovery of sorcery and founds an entire school among mankind, and then he proceeds to create abomination after abomination in a desperate attempt to try and gain the immortality that was denied to him. The thing is, Seath is in possession of the Primordial Crystal, and as long as it’s around, he can’t die, but he feels so inadequate and so cheated that he cannot be satisfied by this as long as he doesn’t have scales himself. All of the experiments he conducts and the horrors he unleashes upon the world stems from his fear of his own mortality, and even if he still possessed the wherewithal to try and benefit the world in any way, his own selfishness, fear, and paranoia has rendered him unable to leave his Archives, incapable of doing anything with his plethora of knowledge than to try and solve an unsolvable puzzle.
Ironically, even after he does finally die at our hand, Seath probably lives on the most as far as his legacy goes, as seen in Tseldora and the cult of worship that is found in the archives of Lothric and in King Ocerios himself. Once again, driven by nothing else but a mad will, Seath seems to outlive nearly everyone else.
Lucatiel of Mirrah
Lucatiel is another character in Dark Souls 2 whose quest seems to mirror our own. She got to where she is in life through the school of hard knocks, and anything she has gotten, she has earned through slowly mastering her sword and making a reputation to be feared. And then, it all was taken away by the resurgence of the Darksign, and now she finds herself trekking through Drangleic is an attempt to find a cure. What strikes a chord with me is how Lucatiel starts off trying to be somewhat rational about the whole thing, but the more we meet her, the more she admits that she is scared, and that’s a frighteningly honest thought to share. People don’t like to admit that they’re afraid, and when someone as tough as Lucatiel admits that she doesn’t want to go Hollow, it makes us feel uneasy as well. While we have the benefit of knowing that we’ll be fine so long as we don’t go mad out of game, it’s kind of a reality check to know that this fate is something that can await anyone, and it doesn’t matter how tough, skilled, or good you are. Like Solaire before her, Lucatiel is there to lend a helping hand in some of the tougher fights that face you in the game, and this camaraderie makes you more attached to her and you wish there was a way to help her find solace (anyone who can tank the Smelter Demon for me is a grade A friend in my book). But, of course, she’s doomed from the start, and the last we see of her, she’s struggling to remember her own name and who we are. The last request she ever makes of us is that we remember her name, so that she doesn’t have to be forgotten entirely, and to have such a humble, simple request made by such an accomplished warrior is a sobering thing, to be sure. Maybe in our race to see who is the strongest, we forget to think about what really matters to us, in the end.
Gwyndolin
You can go the entirety of the game without even knowing that Gwyndolin even exists, and yet he’s almost entirely responsible for the main plot that you’re likely to go on the first time through. Born mutated, raised as a woman, and kept hidden from everyone, Gwynn’s youngest son is practically invisible. There’s not a statue of him to be seen anywhere, even as the podiums of Gywnn’s eldest remain empty following his fall from grace. And yet, in spite of this shunning, Gwyndolin is oddly devoted to his father. After Gwynn leaves, Gwyndolin stands guard over a tomb that doesn’t even contain his father’s body, and denies anyone access to it. After all of the other gods abandon Anor Londo, Gwyndolin alone stays behind to try and uphold what his father has created, and refuses to let the dream die. He creates an elaborate set up along with Frampt to fabricate a faux destiny for Undead to follow to try and link the Flame and keep Gwynn’s Age of Fire alive. Some of the checkpoints for obtaining this goal are made more interesting if considered that Gwyndolin is the one setting them up. You have to kill Quelagg, daughter of Izalith, to even get to Anor Londo, then kill Gwynn’s right-hand knight Ornstien and Executioner Smough (assuming these are, in fact, the real people and not illusions), and you are then sent on a hitlist to kill Nito, the Witch of Izalith, Seath, and the Four Kings, all former comrades of Gwynn. It’s like Gwyndolin seems to hold no regard or love for any of the other gods, and indeed seems to have some level of vindication against people who his father might have held in esteem, but at no point aims any of this vindication against Gwynn himself. Gwyndolin’s story seems to be a sad tale of someone who just wanted his father’s love, and unable to get it in life, was content to try and extract it from a memory, delivering loyalty and devotion to an idea that could never really love him back.
Aldrich, Saint of the Deep
Out of all the bosses in the series, Aldrich seems to have one of the most detailed and well told stories. We know that he starts off as a priest, possibly of the Way of White, and either serving under or working alongside Pontiff Sulyvhan, begins to become more and more powerful within his order, enough to start gathering dedicated followers. As his stature grows, Aldrich becomes confident in experimenting with a certain fascination he develops: eating other people. And not just for the sake of nourishment, but because he particularly enjoys hearing their screams. As he accumulates more and more souls, he becomes blobby and sludgelike, and eventually has enough power that he is convinced to sacrifice himself to link the First Flame. He does this, but any glory that might come from burning yourself alive is negated when he is ultimately brought back to life and asked to do it again. Much like the other Lords of Cinder, Aldrich has other ideas, but unlike Yhorm’s moping and the Abyss Watcher’s oncoming insanity, Aldrich dares to think bigger. In a turn that is different from anything else we’ve seen, he views a world after the Fire fades, and thinks not of Light or of Dark, but of the Deep Sea. With this epiphany, he decides to do something about it, and in order to increase his power, decides that he’s going to have to switch from eating regular people to eating gods. And thankfully for him, Pontiff Sulyvhan has managed to get his hands on the last god that stuck around: Gwyndolin, whose life sucks. And so Aldrich eats Gwyndolin, and perhaps others: though there’s no real confirmation, Aldrich also has the Lifehunt Scythe, which belonged to Priscilla, and his spear used while fighting has the form of the Gravelord Sword on the tip.
What was great about unraveling Aldrich’s story is that you could piece it together while you were playing. Hawkwood tells you about his origins, Sulyvhan’s soul item informs you about his feeding Aldrich a God, and when you get to Anor Londo, you find that Gwyndolin’s hall is empty and abandoned, his Firekeeper Guard dead within, and it doesn’t take too long to figure out what’s going on. Finding Gwyndolin’s empty hall, finding the dead Giant smith, and seeing the cathedral covered in muck and slime honestly made me want to destroy Aldrich more than any boss I can think of. He managed to take one of the most iconic places in the series and twisted it to suit his means, ate one of my favorite characters, and is probably one of the best antagonists for exactly that reason.
Quelanna
Much like Gwyndolin, it’s interesting to see one of the offspring of the Lords in the flesh, and not twisted beyond comprehension. Quelanna is an interesting character in the first game: she’s more or less a god and has existed since the dawn of time, but unlike Gwyndolin, who has embraced the pretentiousness of his lineage and forbids people to even look upon an empty tomb, the Daughter of Chaos is approachable and humble, dressed in a ragged robe, sitting on a lonely island in the middle of a swamp. And while Gwyndolin will only teach if you make a covenant to him, Quelanna will willingly teach Pyromancies to pupils if she deems them capable of mastering her arts. She’s an interesting reality check separated from the mysteries and grandeur of Anor Londo and the Lords. She explains how the Witch of Izaliths’ attempt at relighting the First Flame was folly, and although she loves her mother, she asks the Chosen Undead to kill the Witch and put her out of her misery (“1000 years is punishment enough.”). She’s not there to uphold an age that she knows is no longer viable, but wants to help out those who are here to usher in a new one. She’s a woman of simple truths, and all she really seems to want is to know that her family is at rest. Indeed, after killing off most of her twisted family in the first game, the last time we see her is in Dark Souls 3, in the ruins of Izalith, her corpse nestled up against The Fair Lady, comforting her sister for the rest of time.
Executioner Smough
There’s no particularly deep or interesting reason why Smough is one of my favorite characters, I just really like him. I think part of it is because he plays this strange fifth wheel alongside the super cool and awesome Knights of Gwynn. Ornstien is the leader and dragon slayer, Ciaran is the stealthy assassin, Gough is the big, tough sharp shooter, and Artorias is all mysterious and broody. And then you have Smough, who is this great big guy who is as subtle as a brick in the face, who just clocks people with his hammer and then eats them. There’s kind of a funny insight into his relationship with Ornstien during their boss fight: if you kill Smough first, Ornstien will gently put his hand on his comrade to pay his final respects. If you kill Ornstien first, Smough just smacks him with the hammer and takes his power. There is no love lost there, at least as far as Smough is concerned. He’s the uncouth brute in a city of majesty and prestige, and part of me can get behind that.
I felt like doing some writing, so I put together a quick list on some of my favorite Dark Souls characters. It was originally going to be a top 5, but then kept growing as I kept thinking of other characters that I liked, and frankly, I can't limit my favorites in this well thought out and developed series to just one list. So here are some of my favs, and I may add some later.
Keep in mind that these are in no particular order, save for the first.
Seigmeyer
In a world where everything is trying to kill you, and most of the people you meet have some ulterior motives, Seigmeyer is a true blue friend. Although suffering from the same blight of hollowing that plagues nearly every other human character, the knight from Catarina manages to keep his chin up and greet you with a hearty “hello,” no matter how big the pickle he’s in might be. And that goes a long way in a game that’s about retaining your humanity while everything is fading all around you: if people like Lautrec and Patches show how clinging to retaining your humanity leads to committing increasingly less humane acts, or Crestfallen, who simply decides to embrace despair and stop trying, Seigmeyer demonstrates that you don’t have to revoke your honor and compassion just because the going gets rough. And the going is certainly rough for Seigmeyer, who keeps running into walls that we have to bail him out of. And yet, that only makes me like him more, because his adventure is very similar to ours. Rather than just cruise through things, he runs into problems that he just can’t seem to find a way around, and sometimes sitting and puzzling out what to do is the only way to make it through. Sometimes, you need a summon or a Sun Bro to come in and give you that extra hand you need, albeit at the expense of some pride and accomplishment. Which eventually culminates to Seigmeyer feeling that he’s taken so much that he is honor bound to give back, and is more than willing to get himself killed by the Chaos Demons if it means that he can finally pay back his debt to you and let you get away. He will get no reward for doing so, obviously, but just want to help a friend, and that’s awfully touching (considering what happens to your other friend who is just a hallway away in Izalith).
Of course, it being Dark Souls, even if you do stop Seigmeyer from getting killed, it still doesn’t save him from probably the most tragic story in the game, and one of the few times in games that I still get a little misty eyed over.
King Vendrick
If Gwynn is Macbeth, who is hoisted up by his pride and felled by clinging to his fears, Vendrick is Leer, who loved too much only to be blinded to what was actually happening in his kingdom, and was then forced to watch it all fall apart. What I liked about Vendrick is how much is story is tied to that of our own. While Lordran is the creation of the gods, Drangleic is entirely man made, by a person who relied on his own strength, collected enough great souls to increase his power, and then built a kingdom based on things he believed in. It’s a neat transition from a world that is descended from everlasting dragons and gods to one that is made by mere mortals. But, as we go along our quest, we begin to see just how faulty the creations of the Dark Soul can be. Straid tells us that the Lost Bastille is from a kingdom long before Drangleic, but was built to try and combat the rising Undead epidemic. The Iron King is said to have led hunts against Hollows to try and fight them back, only to have those he employed go Hollow as well, and he himself defeated by his own hubris. Tseldora was consumed by the greed and aloofness of the Duke. All of the kingdoms we find time and time again have fallen and relinquished its power to the sands of time, and it becomes clear that anything that is built in this world is doomed to fall sooner or later.
It’s this looming, inevitable tragedy that makes Vendrick’s story so poignant. At the height of his power, he becomes infatuated with Nashandra, daughter of Manus, and is convinced that the only way to protect his kingdom is to challenge the Giants. What’s important is that his desire to declare war is fueled by a relatively humane desire to protect those under him, and to earn the love of someone he himself loves (even later, he still refers to his Queen as his dead Shandra). But in his confidence, he winds up waking up a wrath that neither he nor his legions could ever hope to combat, and the Giants run roughshod on everything he spent his life making, driving it to ruin. The Curse decides to return and begins to eat his kingdom from the inside. He becomes aware that Nashandra has been playing him in hopes of acquiring the First Flame for herself. And, after years of insight and studying of the soul, Vendrick is forced to concede that the return of the Curse, the coming of Dark, and the end of the age as they know it, has all been inevitable, and if it doesn’t end with him, it will do so later on. It’s this long, drawn out, soul crushing revelation that makes Vendrick so tragic to me: we’re told when we first start that he’s the king we should aspire to be, and as we slowly unravel the train wreck that is his existence, we not only feel pity for him, but also come to realize that we can apply the same level of despair to our own quest, if we choose to. The only thing that Vendrick could think of doing was to run and hide in the deepest parts of the earth, waiting alone for eternity, in hopes of trying to deny the Flame his soul to try and beat the cycle in the only way that he could, and even then, he can’t ultimately stop us, or someone else, from linking the Fire and starting everything anew. And although we, the player, naturally think of ourselves as somehow above all of this, Vendrick, who is not all that different from our character, forces us to recognize the unpleasant truths that loom before us, and makes us think: what makes a true monarch?
Seath the Scaleless
What’s interesting about Seath is how he was the only one of his race that was supposed to die, yet not only managed to outlive them all, but has managed to have an influence on the world of gods and men for centuries. The mad emotion of the pale dragon is always in juxtaposition with a surplus of rational knowledge. He is deeply jealous of his immortal brethren to the point of sacrificing all of them to Gwynn and the lords, which is only made possible by his studies and insight as to how destroying the dragons is even possible. The studies he makes after becoming a duke leads to the discovery of sorcery and founds an entire school among mankind, and then he proceeds to create abomination after abomination in a desperate attempt to try and gain the immortality that was denied to him. The thing is, Seath is in possession of the Primordial Crystal, and as long as it’s around, he can’t die, but he feels so inadequate and so cheated that he cannot be satisfied by this as long as he doesn’t have scales himself. All of the experiments he conducts and the horrors he unleashes upon the world stems from his fear of his own mortality, and even if he still possessed the wherewithal to try and benefit the world in any way, his own selfishness, fear, and paranoia has rendered him unable to leave his Archives, incapable of doing anything with his plethora of knowledge than to try and solve an unsolvable puzzle.
Ironically, even after he does finally die at our hand, Seath probably lives on the most as far as his legacy goes, as seen in Tseldora and the cult of worship that is found in the archives of Lothric and in King Ocerios himself. Once again, driven by nothing else but a mad will, Seath seems to outlive nearly everyone else.
Lucatiel of Mirrah
Lucatiel is another character in Dark Souls 2 whose quest seems to mirror our own. She got to where she is in life through the school of hard knocks, and anything she has gotten, she has earned through slowly mastering her sword and making a reputation to be feared. And then, it all was taken away by the resurgence of the Darksign, and now she finds herself trekking through Drangleic is an attempt to find a cure. What strikes a chord with me is how Lucatiel starts off trying to be somewhat rational about the whole thing, but the more we meet her, the more she admits that she is scared, and that’s a frighteningly honest thought to share. People don’t like to admit that they’re afraid, and when someone as tough as Lucatiel admits that she doesn’t want to go Hollow, it makes us feel uneasy as well. While we have the benefit of knowing that we’ll be fine so long as we don’t go mad out of game, it’s kind of a reality check to know that this fate is something that can await anyone, and it doesn’t matter how tough, skilled, or good you are. Like Solaire before her, Lucatiel is there to lend a helping hand in some of the tougher fights that face you in the game, and this camaraderie makes you more attached to her and you wish there was a way to help her find solace (anyone who can tank the Smelter Demon for me is a grade A friend in my book). But, of course, she’s doomed from the start, and the last we see of her, she’s struggling to remember her own name and who we are. The last request she ever makes of us is that we remember her name, so that she doesn’t have to be forgotten entirely, and to have such a humble, simple request made by such an accomplished warrior is a sobering thing, to be sure. Maybe in our race to see who is the strongest, we forget to think about what really matters to us, in the end.
Gwyndolin
You can go the entirety of the game without even knowing that Gwyndolin even exists, and yet he’s almost entirely responsible for the main plot that you’re likely to go on the first time through. Born mutated, raised as a woman, and kept hidden from everyone, Gwynn’s youngest son is practically invisible. There’s not a statue of him to be seen anywhere, even as the podiums of Gywnn’s eldest remain empty following his fall from grace. And yet, in spite of this shunning, Gwyndolin is oddly devoted to his father. After Gwynn leaves, Gwyndolin stands guard over a tomb that doesn’t even contain his father’s body, and denies anyone access to it. After all of the other gods abandon Anor Londo, Gwyndolin alone stays behind to try and uphold what his father has created, and refuses to let the dream die. He creates an elaborate set up along with Frampt to fabricate a faux destiny for Undead to follow to try and link the Flame and keep Gwynn’s Age of Fire alive. Some of the checkpoints for obtaining this goal are made more interesting if considered that Gwyndolin is the one setting them up. You have to kill Quelagg, daughter of Izalith, to even get to Anor Londo, then kill Gwynn’s right-hand knight Ornstien and Executioner Smough (assuming these are, in fact, the real people and not illusions), and you are then sent on a hitlist to kill Nito, the Witch of Izalith, Seath, and the Four Kings, all former comrades of Gwynn. It’s like Gwyndolin seems to hold no regard or love for any of the other gods, and indeed seems to have some level of vindication against people who his father might have held in esteem, but at no point aims any of this vindication against Gwynn himself. Gwyndolin’s story seems to be a sad tale of someone who just wanted his father’s love, and unable to get it in life, was content to try and extract it from a memory, delivering loyalty and devotion to an idea that could never really love him back.
Aldrich, Saint of the Deep
Out of all the bosses in the series, Aldrich seems to have one of the most detailed and well told stories. We know that he starts off as a priest, possibly of the Way of White, and either serving under or working alongside Pontiff Sulyvhan, begins to become more and more powerful within his order, enough to start gathering dedicated followers. As his stature grows, Aldrich becomes confident in experimenting with a certain fascination he develops: eating other people. And not just for the sake of nourishment, but because he particularly enjoys hearing their screams. As he accumulates more and more souls, he becomes blobby and sludgelike, and eventually has enough power that he is convinced to sacrifice himself to link the First Flame. He does this, but any glory that might come from burning yourself alive is negated when he is ultimately brought back to life and asked to do it again. Much like the other Lords of Cinder, Aldrich has other ideas, but unlike Yhorm’s moping and the Abyss Watcher’s oncoming insanity, Aldrich dares to think bigger. In a turn that is different from anything else we’ve seen, he views a world after the Fire fades, and thinks not of Light or of Dark, but of the Deep Sea. With this epiphany, he decides to do something about it, and in order to increase his power, decides that he’s going to have to switch from eating regular people to eating gods. And thankfully for him, Pontiff Sulyvhan has managed to get his hands on the last god that stuck around: Gwyndolin, whose life sucks. And so Aldrich eats Gwyndolin, and perhaps others: though there’s no real confirmation, Aldrich also has the Lifehunt Scythe, which belonged to Priscilla, and his spear used while fighting has the form of the Gravelord Sword on the tip.
What was great about unraveling Aldrich’s story is that you could piece it together while you were playing. Hawkwood tells you about his origins, Sulyvhan’s soul item informs you about his feeding Aldrich a God, and when you get to Anor Londo, you find that Gwyndolin’s hall is empty and abandoned, his Firekeeper Guard dead within, and it doesn’t take too long to figure out what’s going on. Finding Gwyndolin’s empty hall, finding the dead Giant smith, and seeing the cathedral covered in muck and slime honestly made me want to destroy Aldrich more than any boss I can think of. He managed to take one of the most iconic places in the series and twisted it to suit his means, ate one of my favorite characters, and is probably one of the best antagonists for exactly that reason.
Quelanna
Much like Gwyndolin, it’s interesting to see one of the offspring of the Lords in the flesh, and not twisted beyond comprehension. Quelanna is an interesting character in the first game: she’s more or less a god and has existed since the dawn of time, but unlike Gwyndolin, who has embraced the pretentiousness of his lineage and forbids people to even look upon an empty tomb, the Daughter of Chaos is approachable and humble, dressed in a ragged robe, sitting on a lonely island in the middle of a swamp. And while Gwyndolin will only teach if you make a covenant to him, Quelanna will willingly teach Pyromancies to pupils if she deems them capable of mastering her arts. She’s an interesting reality check separated from the mysteries and grandeur of Anor Londo and the Lords. She explains how the Witch of Izaliths’ attempt at relighting the First Flame was folly, and although she loves her mother, she asks the Chosen Undead to kill the Witch and put her out of her misery (“1000 years is punishment enough.”). She’s not there to uphold an age that she knows is no longer viable, but wants to help out those who are here to usher in a new one. She’s a woman of simple truths, and all she really seems to want is to know that her family is at rest. Indeed, after killing off most of her twisted family in the first game, the last time we see her is in Dark Souls 3, in the ruins of Izalith, her corpse nestled up against The Fair Lady, comforting her sister for the rest of time.
Executioner Smough
There’s no particularly deep or interesting reason why Smough is one of my favorite characters, I just really like him. I think part of it is because he plays this strange fifth wheel alongside the super cool and awesome Knights of Gwynn. Ornstien is the leader and dragon slayer, Ciaran is the stealthy assassin, Gough is the big, tough sharp shooter, and Artorias is all mysterious and broody. And then you have Smough, who is this great big guy who is as subtle as a brick in the face, who just clocks people with his hammer and then eats them. There’s kind of a funny insight into his relationship with Ornstien during their boss fight: if you kill Smough first, Ornstien will gently put his hand on his comrade to pay his final respects. If you kill Ornstien first, Smough just smacks him with the hammer and takes his power. There is no love lost there, at least as far as Smough is concerned. He’s the uncouth brute in a city of majesty and prestige, and part of me can get behind that.