Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-29522860-20160918221029

Why are you talking about this, you ask? Good question.

Perhaps there is an answer somewhere.

Many people believe that he is the Pygmy because he is described as a primeval human, and my personal belief is that Manus is a primeval human, but how I define that is different. In the dictonary it defines primeval as "of   or   resembling  the  earliest  ages in the history of the world ," so a primeval human would be one from the earliest era of their existance.

If you remember, the humans were once just as powerful as the gods (if you count the overpowered dark sorceries in the first game as canon, perhaps even more powerful than realized), but Gwyn linked the flame out of his fear of the Dark (which could refer to the concept itself, or perhaps the power of dark sorceries used by the humans).

Now picture the past of the first fading under the assumption that I am correct in my theory. Humans would likely have been of the sort that Karla is in DS3, where they are masters of dark sorceries, the true power of humans. They would have their own catalysts, and be skilled in directing their emotions to make their powers work for them, and could use the art eficently in combat. To use pursuers as an example, it consists of attributing a disembodied portion of your humanity with the emotion of intense love or dangerous envy, both of which cause the spell to chase after and collide with the first thing to attract it just like a human will tenaciously and irrationally pursue the object of their love or hate.

It sets an interesting comparison to the nature of humans being one of manipulating emotion and embracing things that the gods would deem immoral, explaining the dislike that gods and giants both have for humans, for your good deeds are surpising to Ciaran and Gough while your bad deeds are unsurprising to them. And when you really think about the descision to kill Gough, and his response being very unsurprised, it shows that such irrational nature in humans was expected.

When Gwyn linked the fire however, something caused humans to forget this power, and become fearful of dark powers and run to the light of the gods. My belief is that the gods somehow removed the memory of the power once held, or the damage to reality by artifically prolonging fire caused the populace of humans to forget things, or some other nonsense. But in the wake of this, it seems clear that the gods would make sure humans didnt remember how powerful they were, and the only thing I can think of to prevent primeval humans from passing down the knowledge is that they were done away with. And how do you keep bodies from being found? One way is to bury them.

That is where my theory on Manus' identity comes in. I believe he was one of the dark sorcerers from the first ages, when humans remembered their former powers. For one, he has his own catalyst, and he clearly didnt just get this uniquly designed weapon (which is specificly known as old) by picking up some stick off the forest floor. You can also see that when he casts his dark sorceries, he is actually casting them like a human as opposed to blahrging it like an animal, meaning that he has experience using his unique abilities in combat.

So if that is true, then his story could be that he was buried along with other primeval humans, and was unearthed when Kaathe informed the people of Oolacile of his presence. Impressed by his ability to use powers which no human (technically modern human, but they wouldnt have known by then) can survive uncorrupted, they took what they would consider an anathema into their dungeons, where they experimented relentlessly on him. He would be driven mad, and with his humanity being fed with infinite mindless rage, he was transformed and created the first Abyss.

Does that make sense to anybody? 