One of the stories that I've found quite interesting in Dark Souls is the one of Oolacile, Artorias and New Londo. Here is my interpretation of what happened. Next week I'll do an indepth look as why this is what I think happened.
The residents of Oolacile, a city filled with magic greater than the one found in Vinheim Dragon School, were one day fooled by Kaathe, the Dark Serpent. They upturned the grave of a primeval man to steal his precious pendant, without really knowing what this pendant meant. This action woke up Manus and, seeing his pendant was stolen, went into a wild rage. This rage created the Abyss, and Manus was thus known as Father of the Abyss. As revenge, he corrupted the residents of Oolacile, making their humanities go wild and mutating them into ghastly creatures.
Meanwhile, in New Londo, four powerful men were given the title of Kings from Lord Gwyn and received fragments of his great soul after he recognized their foresight. Hearing of this, Kaathe went to them and proposed to give them the power of the Dark Soul, Lifedrain. Unable to resist, they accepted and became the pawns of evil. Their knights became Darkwraiths, servants of the Dark, and, encouraged by Kaathe, used the power of the Dark Soul to absorb humanity from the residents of New Londo. These atrocious acts of evil brought in the Abyss, but a corrupted one since the Kings had fragments of Lord Gwyn’s great soul inside them.
Hearing of the Darkwraiths’ rule of terror in New Londo, Artorias decided to hunt them down. He quickly learned he couldn’t go into the Abyss, and thus made a pact with the creatures inhabiting it. This pact gave him the ability to traverse the Abyss, but cursing his sword in the process. After annihilating the Darkwraiths, Artorias was rewarded with one of the ancient treasures of Anor Londo, the Silver Pendant.
After this, he heard about a primeval man that was corrupting the residents of Oolacile and kidnapped Princess Dusk, and so he went to this town to rescue the Princess. Not knowing that this Abyss was different than the one that was in New Londo, Artorias confidently went in with his grey wolf, Sif. Sadly, without any Dark inside him because of the fragment of the great soul Gwyn had gifted him with, the Abyss slowly started corrupting him. He resisted this corruption thanks to his Silver Pendant, his will and his greatshield. On his way to Manus, he lost his Silver Pendant during a fight, but still pushed forward. The more he got closer to Manus, the more Humanity Sprites there were and the more they attacked him. After getting deeply scarred, Artorias lost hope of ever reaching and beating Manus, and so he used his greatshield to create a protective barrier around Sif and let himself be swallowed by the Abyss.
In New Londo, the Darkwraiths came back and started killing the inhabitants again. Seeing no other solution, three powerful healers decided to make the sacrifice and flood New Londo to contain the Darkwraiths. After that, they had to block off the city from the rest of the world so the ghosts of New Londo Ruins wouldn’t go outside of the city.
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