Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-24459775-20140315020817/@comment-6003396-20140323052540

I've been thinking about what possible role the Abyss may be playing with the reappearance of familiar characters. Let me first state that I haven't completed my first playthrough yet, so there are things that I am probably not aware of, and also that this will be highly speculative.

The characters that I know of that have made a reappearance from the first game – assuming that they are indeed the same characters and not imposters of some kind, which I'm not ruling out – are Ornstein, the dark spirits encountered in the Chasm of Old: Havel, Jeremiah (Xanthous), and Undead Prince Ricard; their one commonality is their association with the Abyss. Ornstein with his dark magic, and the rest are presumably found within Drangleic's version of the Abyss. Perhaps the Abyss has the power to bend space and time, sending characters from the remote past of Lordran to the present time in Drangleic. Two portals that are linked? This would also partly explain why Manus has the ability to pull the Chosen Undead back in time to Oolacile. However, this doesn't explain why these characters are apparently alive again (Gwyndolin's illusion theory is full of holes, in my opinion, and it wouldn't explain the dark spirits anyway), could the Abyss have the power of resurrection? or are there parallel worlds with alternate selves coalescing within the Abyss? This is where it falls apart, but wanted to hear your thoughts on it. And I'm interested to hear anything that I am not aware of to discredit/support this.