Talk:Dragonslayer Spear (Dark Souls II)/@comment-24701196-20140407003107/@comment-1961216-20140430223650

Ornstein and Smough are not illusions, unless someone intends to explain how Gwyndolin manufactured copies of their souls. Certainly Dolly can enchant suits of armor with normal souls (that's why their stuff stays when you kill them and take it), but at no point does Dark Souls hint that creating individual big souls from many small souls is possible.

The Dark Dragonslayer uses a butt smash attack that Ornstein has too, but only after absorbing Smough. This implies that only Ornstein could possibly use that rump attack.

He drops his ring, his soul makes his weapon (complete with lightning powers), the list goes on. It is overwhelmingly likely that the Old Dragonslayer is Ornstein, or else whoever created the Old Dragonslayer (as in, in the lore) intentionally modeled it on a very intimate familiarity with Ornstein.

I hold that Ornstein is Undead, was Undead since before Dark Souls 1, and is in the Cathedral because like many other Undead he came to Drangleic looking to cure his curse and subsequently lost his memory. The Cathedral is the only link he has left to his barely-remembered past.