I’m now composing the ongoing Dark Souls series while playing through Sekiro (slowly), and being able to note the similarities and differences, immersed as I am, is a pretty interesting experience. It’s also pretty plain at this point that getting at the juicy, literary meat of the game is going to be way harder for me this time around. Dark Souls and Bloodborne were riffing on philosophical frameworks (Christianity, Lovecraft, Nietzsche) that I am coincidentally familiar with. Sekiro has structurally similar roots in Buddhism and sort-of obscure 1960’s ninja-historical-fantasy, about which I know approximately fuck all. Accordingly, the following are working notes, a surface reading of a game I still haven’t finished, an attempt to get the ideas on paper where perhaps a pith might become more visible.
Literary References
Miyazaki himself cites the manga Basilisk and the works of Futaro Yamada as an inspiration for elements of Sekiro’s world. For those unfamiliar (myself included), these began with a novel published in 1958 called Kōga Ninpōchō, a historical fantasy about rival clans of superhuman mutant ninjas who get caught up in a Romeo-and-Juliet-style love triangle. I was totally unaware that this style of storytelling had roots that old (contemporary with Tolkien, even though the first English translation seems to have been published in 2006). More research is needed–discoveries like this keep me humble as to how little I really know.
Historical References
The setup of the game is that near the end of the Sengoku period, Isshin Ashina stages a coup and takes over one of Japan’s warring regions. Twenty years later, the story begins. Neither Isshin, nor his grandson Genichiro appear to have been real people, but the Ashina clan was. Translating some historical details: The region, known also as Ashina in-game, was likely the Aizu region historically, and the aforementioned “end” of the Sengoku period is probably the first of such points recognized by historians–the conquest of Kyoto by Nobunaga Oda. Twenty years after this point, the Ashina clan was defeated decisively by Masamune Date who then seized control of the Aizu region. Timing checks out.
It’s also likely that the family personas are based on real people. Based on the timing and details of their life stories, it seems likely that Isshin and Genichiro are meant to parallel Moriuji and Moritaka Ashina respectively. Moriuji’s reign was considered to be a golden age for the clan, whereas Moritaka (not Moriuji’s grandson, but not his son either) succeeded him and, proving unpopular among his retainers, was assassinated. Spoiler: This is more than vaguely similar to Genichiro’s fate in the game.
Buddhism/Literary Motifs
I know embarrassingly little about Buddhism, and I hope to do more reading before formalizing any of this, but the narrative is clearly moist with its secretions. The repeated theme of death and rebirth seems to be a clear expression, but it almost certainly goes deeper. The Sculptor’s obsessive drive to carve the Buddha (and its relationship to his previous life as a shinobi), the relationship between Kuro and other sources of immortality, even the significance of Sekiro using a prosthetic for a left arm–they scream meaning, and I bet much of it is tied up in philosophical traditions very different from the earlier games.
Aside, Miyazaki apparently took a backseat on writing for this game, so it probably will not have the same tone anyway.
Sources for my information include the linked interview, Wikipedia, and Samurai Wiki.
It’s been a little while since we’ve been here. If you need, check out the previous posts in this series first. Also, because you can never sit down and read just one thing, I linked an article in my first essay on this topic. If you haven’t read it yet, you should now. It was always relevant, but it connects the philosophical parts of this to our reality better than I ever could.
A little under two months ago, I started this blog, and the first substantive thing I posted was about choices in video games. This will be about choices as well, in video games, in life, and, more deeply, in what we value. It will be a turning point–the previous essays have been getting at the metaphors underlying Dark Souls’ setup. Now, we get to ask the question: “Why?”
I.
I’ve talked a lot about “Truth” in the last two essays without really getting into what it means. This is meant to be respectful. The only sense in which I am the first to say any of the things I’m saying is the sense in which they relate to Dark Souls (which is still a little surprising, but I’ve beaten that horse enough already). Still, since this runs the risk of sounding completely insane without clarity on that concept, I want to be explicit: Truth is something that humans value–we all intrinsically want the things we believe to be true. This starts, obviously, with perceptions of reality, but then it goes and starts a bar fight with religion and science. For those interested in the hard sciences without a background in philosophy, it may be difficult to believe, but the advances in scientific thought that propelled us from the Middle Ages to modernity were based heavily on metaphysics. This starts with the question “If I can’t trust what I see, how can I know anything?” but the high-level ends up being this: We created/reinforced gods in service of Truth. We then ask whether we need gods and, unable to see their purpose, begin devaluing them. Then comes the best part: Some asshole asks whether we need Truth.
“Is this still about Dark Souls?” Sure, just replace “Truth” and “gods” with “Flame” and “Lords”, and we’re hunky dory. More pointedly, in Dark Souls, that asshole has a name: Kaathe.
Darkstalker Kaathe is a primordial serpent. He goes way back to when the world was mist and trees and dragons, and this means A) he has a complicated relationship with the Truth and gods metaphor that I don’t really want to get into here and B) his age grants him a view on the situation that doesn’t have a good real-world analog. Anyway, he starts a cult, they kill a lot of people, and the powers that be flood a city on top of them. This is the advent of nihilism in Dark Souls. The details actually are pretty interesting, but the Abyss is going to get its own essay. Kaathe is coming up here because he’s the one that offers you an alternative in your quest to save the world. Oh yes, you were on a quest–didn’t I mention that?
II.
That isn’t a gotcha at all if you actually played Dark Souls, but I know for a fact that some of you have not. Recall from the intro:
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed Darksign.
The plot of the game–which we’ve avoided discussing up to now–is you exploring Lordran in fulfillment of some vague prophecy that no one seems to have respect for, but then you complete the first piece, ring some bells, and a giant snake blasts out of the ground where you first showed up. His name is Frampt, and he tells you that your purpose is to succeed Lord Gwyn and link the Fire, prolonging this golden age. He’s not terribly specific about what “linking the Fire” means, but man, becoming the successor to God? That seems pretty neat, and so this becomes your quest: You must gather the souls of the gods and use them to open the way to the Kiln of the First Flame, that you may link the Fire.
That goes about as swimmingly as things can go in Lordran until you find Kaathe at the bottom of the Abyss. He has a counterproposal for you: Why don’t you just…not do that? Gwyn went and linked the Fire, sure, but he was a pussy, scared of the dark or something. It’s not like an Age of Dark would actually end the world or anything. This is when he lets you in on the piece of the creation myth that doesn’t get repeated:
If you remember the other gods from the second essay, you remember that they each represented something. Gwyn was light, the Witch was chaos, Nito was death, but there was another, “so easily forgotten”. The pygmy found a special soul within the Fire, the only one named without a possessive: the Dark Soul. Gwyn is not happy about this for reasons that aren’t really clear without the metaphor, and he goes to great lengths to ensure that the descendants of the pygmy don’t flourish and the dark does not overpower the light. On the first count, he clearly failed–you’re here after all, but you can’t say he wasn’t motivated. To stop the guttering of the Fire and the coming Age of Dark, he used his own body as fuel..
There are a number of metaphors here, let’s unpack them:
First, note the obvious parallel to Christianity, but also note the dramatically developed context. In this version, God still sacrifices himself, but there’s an added element: fear. That he fears the dark here means he fears its impact on the metaphysical–it is not simply love for another substrate of reality. So what danger does the Dark Soul pose?
The Fire is Truth, light emanates from fire, and that makes Gwyn a manifestation of true things. The Dark Soul, then, is what’s left. Not-true things. Lies. “Seems bad.” Oh, really? I’m sure it does, but can you make a case for it without appealing to Truth as a value? Lies are easy to detach from the types of harm we hold to be bad based on other values, but still, they feel wrong, it stings your character to lie to others, and for some reason, you can’t lie to yourself. Truth is king, we’ve put everything else in service to it, and, of course, why would the Fire embrace its own death?
And so, Kaathe offers us a choice: Immolate yourself, the successor to the gods, in service of Truth, or walk away, embrace the lies, and usher in an Age of Dark.
III.
About the most famous thing Nietzsche ever said was “God is dead”. Sounds about right. Death and Chaos are toast, you murdered them on your way here. Light is in the process of burning, soon to be spent. All of that may seem good or bad to you, but to Nietzsche, it was an inevitable result of that initial enshrinement of Truth as our highest value. It brought us through the Stone Ages, to antiquity, to modernity, to the point where we are capable of contending with the forces of Gaia on a nearly even playing field. Truth has brought us power even if we’ve had to sacrifice human meaning to get there, but that was a long-term decision. Now, finally, we have the opportunity to course-correct. Truth is going out, and the sun has reached its median in the course of human history. Nietzsche called it the Great Noon, but as you might guess, the Dark Souls take is a little different.
Interpreting Nietzsche’s options from Lou Keep’s essay, you can translate them to the Dark Souls metaphor like so: The last man is letting every value burn to nothing, ceasing our advance to power, and living on in the twilight until at last we die. Affirmation is embracing the Dark, learning how to lie, and adopting a new hierarchy of values in Truth’s place. Of course, affirmation could mean that we are affirming an ideal that does not exist (which isn’t ideal), or it could mean affirmation of the here and now. The problem is that it’s very hard to do either if we can’t lie to ourselves.
However, Dark Souls allows for two other options, one of which isn’t well explored by Nietzsche’s framework (which we’ll save for last), and one that…well, that he was reacting to in the first place. That one, we’ll discuss next.
Top Image: Screenshot from the launch trailer for Dark Souls 3, I do not own it
There is a story I’m planning to pair with this piece, but for reasons I will not discuss just yet, I likely won’t post it here. Instead, I wanted just to show it to you all:
Rae did a fantastic job with this one, and while the scene is in some ways powerful enough to stand on its own, it also drips context.
I’ve mentioned Spar previously, if briefly, here. The head-brandishing individual is one of its Diarchs–the Right-Hand Queen, specifically. This one, known to history as the Iron Queen (or to her contemporaries as…less savory names), ascended to the throne at a very young age alongside an older, more experienced Left-Hand King who sought to make her politically irrelevant. He arranged that she be sent to the front lines of war for over a decade while he consolidated power at home, but instead of quietly allowing her generals to direct the campaigns (or dying), she became a brutal warrior and an accomplished battlefield tactician, leading her to countless victories and a homecoming in Spar as a hero of the people. Nonetheless, the political elite, the Left-Hand King included, found her vulgar and imperious and feared she would upset the balance of power in the city.
A turning point came when she and the King attended a private demonstration at the academy. A traveling scholar had found a child, prodigious in a strange reality-bending magic practiced in the north, very different from the elemental magics espoused by the Diarchian scholars. Of the twenty or so that went into the room, only the Queen left alive, holding the head of the child in her bloodied gauntlet. She took it to the speaker for the Diarchian senate and presented it to him, with reference to the prophecy all had heard and few had taken to heart: This is what magic has done to our kingdom, I will defend us against it, and you will stand in my way no longer. But even as she holds the child’s head in her right hand, we can see something in her left: the crown of the Left-Hand King. No one knows what happened in that room, no one knows whether the child’s magic truly caused this tragedy, but it hardly matters now that there is no one left to oppose the Queen’s rule.
Top Image: Blame, by Rae Johnson, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
At this point, I am pretty much done with my backlog of material to post here. That means that my lead time per long post is probably going to be a little longer than the 2-3 day intervals I’ve been following to this point. Sevenfold Gyre part three is about a third done, but fuck, it’s update day, so while I continue grinding that out, today you get a shitpost of a game review.
Those who have been following my Dark Souls series are probably aware that today, From Software released Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s first game since Dark Souls 3 in a vaguely similar space (technically he also directed Déraciné, but that’s radically different enough that I’m going to ignore it for the purposes of this timeline). As the name might imply: This is not Dark Souls. You’re playing a named character, it’s a stealth game, you don’t do damage–you just need to break the enemy’s poise–the game has a non-historical story (which I’m disappointed about, but only because Dark Souls invented the genre, and I’ve never seen anyone do it as well), the reviews go on and on. Oh yeah, most of that isn’t true, I’m just parroting the takeaways I’ve read online, and it’s actually a double fake, because the big idea is wrong, too: This game is totally Dark Souls.
I can quantify that. Here are the actual differences between Sekiro and Dark Souls (taken broadly, in the “Soulsborne” sense):
The main character has backstory.
There is a jump button.
Enemies block attacks in a way that makes fighting crowds is noticeably more dangerous.
The advancement systems (equipment, stats) have been replaced with the type of thing you see in Devil May Cry (or equivalent action game).
Fits on one hand. I, for one, am thrilled. That said, it’s very polished, combat is intricate in spite of its very fast pace, and moving around is a joy. By far the most significant of those, though, is the first, and it’s a deceptively small change. At a very surface level, the setting is historical. The Ashina clan was a real clan during the Sengoku period, the named characters don’t appear to have been, but whatever. Below that surface, we’re back to–you guessed it–more Dark Souls, with all of the desolation, bleakness, and lovely, fuzzy vagueness that From Software does so well, which is why it’s so cool that simply adding a pre-existing drive to the player character alters the experience so radically. In a lot of ways, the Souls games were framed, defined by that void, and filling it changes the basis for analysis.
Mind, I have no idea at this point what that analysis is going to look like (I’m only 15 hours in), but man, am I stoked to find out.
Top Image: Gameplay/cutscene footage from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I do not own it.
Some of you may have noticed the minimalist titles for the art I’ve been posting for War Torn/Rale. It’s not accidental, and it’s not a deliberate attempt at edge, rather, it’s a philosophical premise that we’ve built into our pipeline, better appreciated with some backstory:
I’ve mentioned before that War Torn is a “dying” world, and I hope my fiction has made its bleakness clear, but I’ve also been pretty vague about what exactly that means. It “starts” (there is time before, but consider this the history’s inciting event) with a prophecy. The exact content of the prophecy varies with each retelling, and no one’s really sure who said it first, but the thrust is this: “The use of magic will destroy the world.” Understandably, this prompts some questions. How will it do this? When? And, most popular: Is it tru, tho? And, of course, the answers don’t come clear, concise, etched into stone–they come in cacophanies, as followers and dissidents argue with words and steel over what words mean and what is true.
That’s not quite true. At first, the prophecy garners little attention from anyone until it gets picked up by the tyrant of a city-state called Spar to cement the legitimacy of her rule during a political crisis, and from there, it becomes the basis for a system of extermination for all those gifted with impure magic. Long story short: A blood mage slips through the cracks of this system, murders the entire establishment, and declares himself the Blood God, beginning an era of free magic. Things proceed slowly but steadily downward from there.
The timeline goes on for several thousand years past that point, until the world is a desert, and the last vestiges of humanity are fighting to the bitter, pyrrhic end over the last known source of drinkable water. Even then, it’s not clear: Was the prophecy true? Was it causal? At a literal level, it’s not something we intend to answer, but Leland and I were set on a metaphor that should hang heavy–much like the prophecy itself on the world’s history–in both the mechanics of our system and the characterization of magic in the canon. Perhaps you’ve noticed in the allusions from stories like The Chimera: Magic is death.
I.
Digression: I don’t think most realize the variability of what “magic” means in different fantasy worlds. Obviously, it is underpinned by different sources of power–the gods, nature, crystals (wtf, Square Enix), the strength of one’s body, etc.–but there are practical differences as well, and if you dig into the philosophy (or at least apparent philosophy–many times this isn’t textual), those differences are pretty profound.
Consider two of the largest archetypes: magic as a scholarship (as practiced by DnD’s wizards) and magic as religion, a means of channeling the power of some elevated entity (as practiced by DnD’s clerics and warlocks). There are others, but it’s defensible to say that almost all magical systems are a linear combination of these two ideas, and praxis, in all cases, is an argument. The difference is just whom you’re arguing with. For religion, that’s a duh, but for the hermetic, scholarly variety, the argument with Truth is a little harder to visualize. Still, I’m not coming up with this from nothing–this line of thought is extremely old, dating back to Pythagoras, and it formed the underpinnings of alchemy as it was understood in the Middle Ages as well as the epistemological tradition that enabled modern science (1).
As it concerns War Torn, magic in our world is decidedly of the “hermetic” tradition. There are no proper deities in our world, rather the “True Gods” were presumably human (or animal) at some point, as I describe here, and they don’t have much in the way of codified rites allowing one to channel their power. Rather, magic is fueled by mana, ambient environmental energy that a properly trained individual can sense and draw into himself.
I put quotes around “hermetic” because this is actually fairly paradigm-neutral. It’s just energy that you can harness (essentially) with yoga-style breathing exercises, but it only appears that way because no one really knows what it is. Throughout history, various schools of thought uncover ways that mana may be gathered more effectively. The fire mages of the Diarchian Goetia learn that mana can be harvested from burning flames, the beast mages of the Bloodwood gather it by devouring living prey, and the Walking Winters of the Dereliction leach it directly from their hypothermic victims. Behaviorally, there is a sort of argument with Truth happening here, and the method of argumentation seems to be: being a dick. Think about it. You’re burning down a forest, you’re eating someone, you’re sucking the life from their body. Magic can be used for good, but you can use so much more of it if you’re open to murder.
II.
As I said before, I don’t intend to make the scholarship any clearer than that. Ostensibly, magic is not really death, but there’s a hell of a tragedy going on in the commons. Magic is power, the acquisition of power kills, but how else are we to fight death? This is roughly where the backstory collides with the prompt. Think back to the art titles: Hope, Embrace, Control, Names, a collection of vague ideals, certainly, but there’s a pattern: These are ways that humans fight death.
I mentioned in my intro for Flailingthat the history of War Torn/Rale is not one of humanity at its worst, and I really do mean that. Humanity is obviously capable of a tremendous amount of good (and even more obviously, the opposite), but what’s profound isn’t the capability–it’s the need. Fighting death isn’t just a human behavior, it’s perhaps the most fundamental human behavior of them all, and if you don’t believe me, consider the way we relate to animals: It’s pretty easy to grok a spider’s (or any animal’s) fights and flights, struggles for survival that we experience in our own lives (however indirectly in the modern world), but how well do you relate to allowing your mate to devour you? You’ll note that adulations of the male spider’s noble sacrifice are vanishingly rare (2). Embracing death is unsettling, as a society it revolts us, though the fact that the individual has no such immunity is an important basis for the Dark Souls series.
My point muddles, I’ll clarify: In so many places, in so much literature, you’ll find indictments and benedictions of human nature. We are inherently good, bad, tabula rasa, but that’s wrong. We are all of the above, and we are only one or the other insofar as it serves a need, and that need is to be, if not in true life, then in memory, its simulacrum. Look back to The Dragon’s Thesis. The Dragon’s goal matches the setup perfectly, but look closer: so does Mefit’s. That is the nature of redemption by memory. Even if you die, you’re not dead to everyone else.
III.
This (the essay you’re reading, but also the theme as it appears throughout the world of War Torn/Rale) is meant artistically, as an exploration and affirmation. It does not criticize, and it desires no particular change. Still, some may be tempted to view the singular drive of a fight against death as something selfish. It isn’t. To that end, I’ll leave you on the same note we began. See the opening image. What, do you think, is its title?
Footnotes:
(1): For a good example of how this translates to fantasy, see Full Metal Alchemist, particularly the original. Its brand of magic tracks very well with the mathematical tradition of alchemy as it actually existed. By its title, you can probably tell that it wanted to be associated with alchemy, but recognize that the scholarly wizard angle in DnD et al is the same logical foundation.
(2): It can be justified with some mental gymnastics–we do, in fact, make sacrifices for those we love, but there’s a brief moment of revulsion when you think of it, right?
Top Image: Children, by Quinn Milton, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
Working on a couple of larger pieces right now, but posting is going to be dead for the next few days due to travel. The following was originally written as an introduction to the War Torn/Rale rulebook. That is unlikely to be its final use, but I want to share it here as good perspective on that world, looking to the beginning from the end. Overall the history on which Mefit is commenting is not really a story of humanity at its worst, but it is nonetheless deeply pessimistic. Death here is inexorable, and if humanity at its highly variable average cannot stop it, then hope certainly is difficult to hold.
To whomever reads this: I pray dearly that your hope is not lost. My own fled me long ago, but perhaps you may yet find a use for these pages. You see, I paid for them, with the years of my life, my blood, my sweat, even the integrity of my mind; everything I’ve ever built, indeed everything I’ve ever been, I’ve scrawled onto this parchment and bound in this leather in hope that it might serve as a lens through which one might see the way to save us.
I see no such way. I have found no such map to salvation in what you hold in your hands. I have found only a grim chronicle of the way the world has died. And how is that? Even now I cannot be sure whether it was our arrogance or our cowardice; our strength or our weakness, but I know one thing without a doubt: We are to blame. It was man and woman, just like you or I–indeed you and I–who tore the essence of life from our kin and used it to grind to dust every last thing that was good. Some of us were as dark gods; others simple murderers, rapists, and thieves; still others called themselves heroes. Some called themselves nothing at all. Not one of them–not one of us–was innocent.
Now the ground we stand on is torn asunder, and there is no lot left us but to fall. Grow wings if you can. Else, read on and abandon hope.
-Mefit Il-Hazeen
Note: Mefit Il-Hazeen–though perhaps he did not use that name then–is also the narrator of The Dragon’s Thesis. You’re welcome to sort out the chronology yourselves.
Top Image: Mefit Il-Hazeen, concept sketches by Rae Johnson
Not a substantive post, but I’ve made a few organizational changes to the blog. Notably the Archives are much more up-to-date, and I’ve added a few links to our War Torn artists’ websites on the About page. I’ve also added an Ongoing Series page to help folks read through the Dark Souls and Sevenfold Gyre posts in order (since I’m not really posting them at a readable cadence).
Also, I’m once again approaching a week of travel, so there will be a gap in my posts next week that I’ll try to mitigate as best I can.
Art by Rae Johnson, original story by Leland Masek, editing by me. In between some of the larger posts, I wanted to give a look into the creative process we use for War Torn/Rale. The story was the concept we used to flesh out the idea of this character’s–Judiah’s–death scene, a pivotal moment in the history of our world. Your context is certainly limited, but that’s the intent–what do you glean from these images and words?
Forty hands with forty daggers will find the hole in Judiah’s unbreakable flesh.
And that is what happened.
Judiah, False God of Wind and Time. Was stabbed in the armpit by a random, thrashing, dying girl. With a blade from her grandmother, meant for crops, a tiny, cutting blade. As he held her down and lowered the Arm of Justice to her skin, turning first her hair, then her scalp, to ash, as if caressing her with love. Her random flailings hit flesh like stone over and over, the sound of steel chipping at rock ringing out, nauseating, infamous in Judiah’s wake of destruction. Until a strike landed wet and hot in her hand.
And Judiah’s eyes opened wide. And he blinked. And the Arm of Justice drifted inward, obliterating the poor child’s face as he fell, dying.
The blade had found a gap in his uncanny invincibility, a gap that had not existed the year before, a gap that grows from magic wearing thin. But Judiah had never known his tools well enough to become careful. And like that, his powers of Wind and Time, which had made him God-like for twenty years, simply and utterly failed him.
Top Image: Flailing, by Rae Johnson, commissioned for War Torn/Rale
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