the angels,

Silver Knight Ledo.

Alva and Zullie,

and the Murkmen.

At the end of the world, much is explained,

for characters are ripped here from all ages, all cycles,

without too much regard for context.

And some, like the Dragonslayer Armor,

even came from our age,

an age that ended long ago.

This armor has seen it all:

Once, it was worn by a legendary dragonslayer,

and it lost its master,

but it retained the memory of the fights it had against the Arch-dragons.

Memories that were so potent, the armor itself --

imbued with a soul, admittedly -- still remembered

their sporting hunts.

And left behind in Lothric,

it came to be manipulated by the Pilgrim Butterflies,

dark beings that may well be counterpoint

to the angels that we'll get into later,

who settled there as Lothric's age drew to a close.

And now,

deep in the Abyssal swamp, the armor,

it reads, was defeated by the Champion of Ash

in Lothric, and was left ages to rust.

Until it was possessed, once again,

by the memory of the hunt.

And why I start the video with this armor

is because I really want to talk about how ages HAVE passed.

Remember when you placed the cinders, and

you were teleported to a ruined shrine?

Everything and everyone here in the Dreg Heap --

including Gael, including Lapp --

they might not have done these things,

but they still made it to the very end of an era.

And, of course, a couple more minor

characters made it here. Though

their stories have always been just below the surface.

"One was a wayfaring knight,

on an endless, forbidden search.

Only the Abyss granted closure,

if not reunion with his beloved."

Honestly, most of us probably only know Alva

as that one red phantom who invades in Irithyll.

But he's featured in TWO games now,

and he has a story worth telling, although admittedly,

this is a story that the game explicitly

tells us, for once. There's not much

guesswork to be done here. So this is a tale

of three characters: Alva, Saint Serreta,

and Zullie, the witch.

Alva was a wayfaring knight who made it his quest

to search for a cure

for Saint Serreta's sickness.

He fully dedicated himself to this cause,

to the point where he eventually punished himself

for his failures. His search

would end up being quite famous, for

many bards would eventually sing tales

of his travels, and, of course, his involvement

with the witch.

Zullie is the witch, somone

referenced to employ heretical magical crafts,

which are said to be widely misunderstood,

forcing her to wear a veil when she traveled,

rather than the pointed hat she would wear sometimes

with a deep, unspoken sense of pride.

Zullie heard of Alva's dedication

to Saint Serreta, and decided to use

all manner of tricks and deceit to ruin him.

Perhaps she was trying to demonstrate

the fragility of faith, or

that dedication of man is ultimately a pointless thing.

And so,

her wtichcraft assumedly played a part in this,

but we also hear

that she intended to seduce Alva.

Zullie, however, never loved anyone, nor was she

loved in return.

But, as it turns out,

in trying to seduce him and trying to make him

fail, it's as if she accidentally

found some admiration for the man.

In the end, Alva would not find a cure

for Saint Serreta's sickness, and,

as a result,

wracked with guilt and remorse,

he relinquished his knighthood.

However, he, and Zullie the witch,

eventually both found their purpose in life

in each other.

Zullie, as unloving as she was unloved,

became Alva's closest supporter.

And Alva,

despite failing his saint and his purpose,

would accept the aid of the witch

who once plotted against him.

And that's the story in a nutshell.

But one more thing: Alva is named "seeker of the spurned"

in Dark Souls 3. Which is an odd

title, because to "spurn" something is to

reject it with disdain, and the only

real candidate for that, in this story,

is Zullie, who was spurned as a witch.

So, if he's the "seeker of the spurned"

than at this point of the story in Dark Souls 3,

he must, logically, be seeking Zullie.

And the implication, I think, is that

they're finally reunited in the Ringed City.

"Only the Abyss granted closure,

if not reunion with his beloved."

The implication in this quote, with Alva's invasion

in front of Zullie's set as well,

is that Alva was finally reunited with the witch

in the city that was losing itself to the Abyss.

And, as we'll get into in the video

about the locusts and the Ringed Knights --

subscribe for that --

perhaps the Abyss is not so evil after all.

But there's something else I wanna talk about: it's that, in Japanese,

the word for "spurned" is pulled from "imi",

which is a noun with a significant degree of nuance.

We have to thank Loremaster Nojah

for helping us out with this.

Because the word "imi", which they pulled the word

"spurned" from, in Japanese means something

more like a taboo, a shunned person,

or, strangely,

a purification rite. And obviously,

searching for purification or absolution

is very different to searching for a

shunned person. And I thought it was weird he was titled

"seeker of the spurned", which is why I brought this up.

And I'm glad I learned about the word "imi", because its definitions --

both "seeker of the spurned" and

"seeker of purification" --

both are definitions that fit with the story.

Because, at once, Alva is the seeker of Zullie

the shunned, and reunites with her in the Ringed City.

But also, he is wracked with guilt and remorse

over failing to find a cure for Saint Serreta,

and, as a result, he could be searching for absolution

and purification

and release from his sin, which is a word

that "imi" implied.

Zullie, on the other hand,

appears to enter the service of the Judicator Giant --

a character we'll talk about later -- who enlists,

by force or otherwise, the most

powerful beings who come down here

seeking the Dark Soul.

One of these phantoms is Ledo

of the Silver Knights, who invades us properly

in a tower far above the Abyssal Swamp,

swinging that great, stone-imbued hammer around.

But when you finally get your hands on it, you discover

that this giant rock would've made Havel proud.

And it probably did. It's description says that Ledo

was a traveling eccentric. Someone who befriended

both Havel -- probably because they both loved rocks --

and giants, as well. Which might explain

why he's summoned by the Judicator Giant.

I came across a great

Ledo theory in the comments of this video

a few days ago, when it was released early for patrons.

Salim B. comments that Ledo

could've been the friend that imprisoned

Havel the Rock in Dark Souls 1. And it's

a great theory, looking back.

The Watchtower Basement Key tells us that there are rumors

of a hero-turned-Hollow, who was

locked away by a dear friend. And, of course,

this is a reference to Havel, but back then, we assumed

that the friend who locked him away was most likely Gwyn,

listed as Havel's "old battlefield compatriot".

And he was the closest thing he had to a friend

back then. But I think, if we knew about Ledo,

than we would certainly be more likely to

ascribe this imprisonment to Ledo --

a Silver Knight -- rather than Gwyn -- a Lord --

who might've had more important things to do.

What do you think?

This theory gives a lot of character to Ledo,

and one of the most significant things about Ledo,

for me, is that here's our

first mention of a Silver Knight with a name

and a personality. Not just these

faceless knights that are unquestionably loyal to Gwyn,

Gwynevere, and even empty cathedrals.

This goes a long way to making this Order seem more

interesting, more human. And

I might be less inclined from now on

to see them as an army unit, and more

as individuals who were ultimately driven to serve

the kingdom of Gwyn, but who also had

agency to leave said kingdom and go on

their own travels.

The woman who sees all these travelers go by,

seeking the Ringed City, is the old,

stone-humped hag atop the Dreg Heap.

"Don't run off and die, love.

It's a nicer view with you in it."

This old, stone-humped woman, according

to her ashes, was once the wetnurse of royalty.

So our question is in two parts:

A) why is a pilgrim of Londor here?

And B) to whom

was she a wetnurse of royalty?

Well, in Dark Souls 3, the wetnurses

are exclusively related to

the Lothric royal family, whose wetnurses

groomed the inheritors of the throne.

"But Vaati," you say, "the Dreg Heap is at the end of the world,

and this woman could be the wetnurse

of ANY royalty, right?" And I thought so, too,

initially. Until I looked more closely

at the image for the old woman's ashes.

As pointed out by Sanidus K in the last video,

she wears the priestess ring upon her finger,

confirming that she was, in fact, wetnurse

to the kingdom of Lothric at some point.

And, considering her knowledge of Prince Lorian's endeavors --

"That Prince Lorian spoke of,

I'm sure." --

we can hazard a guess at the priestess

this woman may have once been.

But the question that's really important is, who is she now?

Well previously, all signs pointed to

every pilgrim being of Londor, which

was a land devoted to the usurpation of fire.

Which is a goal that's in stark contrast

to the fire-linking goals of Lothric,

where this woman apparently came from. And

I don't think who she was really matters,

because if anyone were to leave

their former life behind, it would be those of Londor.

Because this is a society that was

comprised of undead who led "unsavory

lives". Their land has many references

to absolving sin, and their

very tome offers salvation to Hollows.

Also, conversely, cursing all

things living. This reminds me of the angels

in more ways than one.

And these angels seem

exclusively born of the pilgrims,

who are assumedly of Londor. Which means that

the angels now fly pretty much in the face

of what we previously thought we knew about the Angelic Faith

of Lothric. Assuming, of course, that

these angels are indeed the angels that visited Gertrude,

and started the Angelic Faith.

So, I suppose I kind of have to