User blog comment:Dark Jeto/The Curse and the Dark/@comment-24709748-20140422034231

While I agree with the first half of your post. I have to disagree with your theory on Nito.

Nito, is the first of the dead. He, as a god, brought death to the world with his lord soul, in the same way that the Witch of Izalith brought life through her sorcery. The curse of the undead is something of a blight to Nito, of all of the gods, because it makes his existence sort of turbulent. It takes the very important eternal rest away from the world and the holders of souls and turns them into monsters who feed upon one another. So the curse of the undead is just as much of a problem to Nito as any of the other great lords. I don't think he would ever wish for a world where peoples' souls cannot rest, are used for fuel and death never comes to anyone.

It's true that you have to sacrifice souls to gain power, but notice how you cannot use souls to kindle a flame. There must be some inherent difference between humanity(a fragment of the dark soul) and a normal individual souls(gained from hollows and monsters, things with life but no humanity.)

In the game I believe a soul is like the essence of life itself, and can be found anywhere and everywhere where life can be found. But the sacrifice of these things cannot rekindle the flame, or prevent a being from going hollow. They can strengthen a creature, but they cannot fuel a flame.

Humanity however, is a corruption in Dark Souls. I believe humanity AND the first flame, in conjunction are ultimately what cause the curse of the undead. The Dark Soul is a corrupting body that infests it's host and gives it all of the vices that come along with being human, but also gives it strength. If you look at the furtive pygmy, you notice how similar it looks to a hollow, it has life but is not human. It's not until it inherits the power of the Dark Soul that humans arise. Each human as it is born is given it's own piece of the Dark Soul. But that part of it is lost when it is killed and arises as an undead, being reborn through the power of the flame. The humanity is burned and is cleansed in the flame. So I'm not sure the world was ever cursed intentionally, rather than the curse was something inherent to the nature of the world's existence. The first flame, by time it is fading, is fueled by the very corruptive power that humans hold. But humanity is not an infinite resource. It is distributed like a currency around Lordran, the strongest collect more and more humanity and the weakest go hollow and fade away. The problem arises when you introduce the Chosen undead, who cannot be vanquished completely from the world.

If you imagine what Gwyn, Nito, and the Witch of izalith looked like before they found their poweful souls, they probably were very weak, pitiful creatures, similar to the Pygmy. The only difference is that they each held a proportionally larger portion of the souls they collected than any one human did of the Dark Soul. Together as a whole, humanity was just as powerful as the gods though.

But the longer the Gods existed the more their power began to fade, because the humans destroyed themselves with war and the humanity that sustained their lives ran out as it was burned. Gwyn began to fear the age of Dark, the age of man. The Darkwraiths want to usher in the age of Dark so that they can seize power for themselves, without having to fear the power of the gods.

In the first game you have to burn all of the great lord souls in the lordvessel. The lordvessel has to be linked to the first flame just as any other bonfire does. And by using the lordvessel and linking the flames, you can return the power of the lord souls to the flame, reforging them for the next generation of gods, as long as the fire is linked. But while the flame allows the existence of gods, it also feeds on the Dark Soul, so if the fire is linked, the Gods may be reborn. Gwyn fears the existence of the undead, because he knows that the humans can exist even if the flame is not linked. If humans knew the nature of the first flame, and if it were to fade, it could hinder his ability to be reborn. During the age of dark man could rule as they see fit, and kill one another until all of the humanity has been lost, waiting for the new age to be rediscovered by one of the lifeless hollows that roam the Earth in the same manner the dragons did before life began and the cycle continues. Whether or not the flame is linked, the cycle continues, the curse persists, and all life fades but is reborn.