Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-5632187-20130119213241/@comment-16047389-20150127200712

Hereticalthoughts wrote: Dark Jeto wrote: Hereticalthoughts wrote: Luckystarz103 wrote: Hereticalthoughts wrote: What if the kings in Dark Souls 2 all have souls formed from Gwyn's soul? Ive thought about it once :/

Sunken, Iron, Ivory, and... Vendrick? Yeah, I mean Gwyn split his soul up several times, so it's possible that OIK only got the single biggest portion of Gwyn's soul while the other kings got the other pieces. Old Iron King hated the Undead with a passion, which makes sense since they were the embodiment of the Dark Soul.

Vendrick desperately wanted to avoid his age ending and took as many steps as he could to stall for time, even to the point of locking himself up in the Undead Crypt to protect his ring.

Sunken is the hardest, but his apparently spiritual nature and devotion to miracles might be from Gwyn's inclination towards miracles as opposed to Pyromancy and Sorcery.

Ivory is probably from the most noble and heroic portion of Gwyn's soul, he was able to accept a daughter of Manus into his home and even sacrificed himself to keep the Chaos at bay. But Gwyn only split his soul into three pieces (one for Seath, one between the Four Kings, and the last kept to himself). We know the Old Iron King possessed the Old King Soul, but Vendrick didn't really do much to preserve his kingdom, as it pretty much ended after the war with the Giants. I think it's more that he fled into the Undead Crypt, because Nashandra was a child of Dark trying to gain access to the First Flame. She probably wanted to herald in the Age of Dark, which, thanks to dialouge with Vendrick, we now know probably means all humans becoming undead.


 * SPOILERS: CONTENT FROM SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN*

Finally, looking at the new description from the Soul of the Rotten, we can clearly see that the king of Shulva went on to become the Rotten, the current keeper of Nito's soul.

True, I never did understand why Vendrick just didn't get his homies (Raime and Velstadt, the Dragon riders, etc.) and just gang up on her, it's not Nashandra could put up that much of a fight against a team like that.
 * END SPOILERS*

Wait, an Age of Dark would make all humans undead? Wouldn't an Age of Dark make humanity sky rocket? "One day, fire will fade, and Dark will become a curse. Men will be free from death, left to wander eternally. Dark will again be ours, and in our true shape... We can bury the false legends of yore... Only... Is this our only choice?" - Vendrick

He's talking about the ending of the Age of Fire, and the beginning of the Age of Dark/Man.