Practice English Speaking&Listening with: "Londor & the Usurpation of Fire" | Dark Souls 3 LORE

Hello fellow Ushen ones! Today we are going to be talking about the city of

Londor, it’s connection to the past and other secrets surrounding it.

Londor is the name of a city the game hints at multiple times

during a typical playthrough, but leaving it’s story and importance quite untouched.

The first time we stump upon Londor is in the Prologue,

where we see the very familiar pilgrims we find multiple times scattered around Lothric.

One of them is Yoel of Londor,

who tells us that their journey started from the aforementioned city, in pilgrimage to Lothric ,

looking to fulfill an unknown duty.

Uppon our first conversation with him he tells us

that he failed to die as was ordained, unlike his companions:

If you should accept it, Yoel will enter into your service,

saving him so his life as you gave him a new purpose to live for.

He promises to help us finding our “true strengh”

and if we should accept this “gift” we’ll see that upon our first level a new item is added to our inventory;

he has branded us with the Dark Sigil:

We’re not interested at the moment in curing this artificial undead curse,

but bear in mind that it can only be healed by a Fire Keeper who managed to return from the Abyss.

Unlike the previous games, we know that our character doesn’t turn hollow upon death

as we are unkindled, unfit even to burn in the flames: we are ash, sterile.

This means we are not linked to the fire and therefore cannot lose our humanity when we die.

But the Dark Sigil does allow us to turn hollow again

and in a similar fashion as we do in Dark Souls 2:

the more often wie die the more “humanity” in form of life we lose.

But this way we gain also strength, as it allows us to level up even more:

that’s how Yoel extracted our “true strength”, the power of the Undead.

However after we accumulated 5 Dark Sigils Yoel dies,

leaving his place to another obscure figure: Yuria of Londor.

She calls us her Lord of Hollows, served by the people of Londor.

So it is possible that Londor might be a land of Hollows, the same way New Londo was.

The Dark Blade Miracle confirms this;

its inhabitants are guided by the Sable Church, a mysterious institution which,

according to the Miracle, was founded by three “daughters”:

It’s worth mentioning at this point that word Sable is the equivalent of Dark and Black,

so together with the previous description, Humanity seems to have a big role in this Church.

We also know of the existence of the Hollow Gems:

Weapons following this infusion path scale with Luck, a key element to the human nature.

But what does the Sable Church preach to Londor’s hollows? Yuria does actually sell us the Londor Braille Divine tome :

What the hollow pilgrims are looking for in their quest is probably salvation from their hollow nature:

by “cursing all things living” we understand that the salvation

this Sable Church promises is most likely death, that might also explain why Yoel

was so disappointed upon not being able to “die as was ordained”.

The pain and sorrow the curse brings, tempts them so much

that some will find in the Purging Stones a momentary relief, betraying their own credo in doing so:

But doing so is seen as heresy by the Sable Church,

as if we would do so ourselves Yuria abandons the Shrine with distaste, never to be seen again.

Then What is the Sable Church? and who’s Yuria? We know that darkness shrouds the Church,

as the miracles it tells often are of dark nature.

A disturbing but familiar confirmation of this is another item Yuria sells, the Dark Hand:

The description is of course talking about Darkstalker Kaathe, leader of the Darkwraiths.

He’s probably the reason why the Sable Church was created,

deceiving the three sisters to create the cult of the undead,

gaining that way trust and loyalty from Londor’s Hollows, forging their will to mirror his own.

If we read the description of Yurias Billed Mask, we gain another piece of the puzzle:

If we would kill her, she would nominate Kaathe explicitly:

"Kaathe, I have failed thee.."

unfortunately we don't know the name of the older sister at the moment but at

least we should have a clearer image by now on what's going on in Londor.

But then, what’s Kaathe’s master plan, his final goal?

At the beginning of this video we introduced the concept of Lord of Hollows and completing Yuria’s questline gives us some concrete answers.

She invites us to perform a ritual, as “our spouse” is waiting for us in the Darkmoon Tomb in Anor Londo.

She’s talking about Anri of Astora, another NPC and undead herself .

We’ll find her laying at the foot of Gwyn’s Tomb

nd by killing her with a Sword given us by Yuria’s Assassin, we complete the ritual.

At this point we absorb what seems to be her soul, perhaps her own Dark Sigil:

we are now the Lord of Hollows, a powerful and worshiped being,

capable of "Usurping the Flame", as Yuria invites us to do.

But what does that mean, usurping the flame?

What we achieved is to strengthen our inner darkness to the point that instead of burning

we can eventually absorb the First Flame in us,

ushering what looks like the Age of Dark.

If we compare this ending to the “End of FIre Ending”,

we notice that by absorbing the Flame we very likely really put an end to the Age of Fire,

while in the latter the FIre Keeper foresees the eventual rise of new flames, thus keeping the eternal cycle alive.

So to me, it really looks like that by doing Kaathe’s will, we put and end to the Undead’s shackles of the Gods

which were created to deliver new fuel to the Fire, hindering its extinguishing.

This would explain also why Kaathe used the Darkwraiths in new Londo to steal humanity from the undeads,

to avoid that more precious “fuel” would be delivered to the Flame, thus prolonging the Age of the Gods.

But why does he want to end this age, why does he want to start a true age of Dark?

By completing Dark Souls we got the idea that it didn’t matter what ending we chose,

the Primordial Serpents always achieved their goal, even if apparently they were against each other.

Well maybe, perhabs, the other Primordial Serpent we know of could tell us something more about it....