Sorcery (element)

For other uses, see Sorcery (disambiguation).

Sorcery is a form of spells in the world of Dark Souls.

Lore

Though the art is now gone, the Witch of Izalith and her children could utilize their souls for flame sorceries, which they used to amazing levels.

Sorceries appear to be tied with the power of souls. In early times, the Witch of Izalith was able to manipulate heat and flame, with a shamanic art called "flame sorcery". This ability was taught to her children, but it has unfortunately died with them when the Witch fell to Chaos and Pyromancy was created, with the Demon Firesage being the last master of the original fire arts. Painted worlds are also known to harness their cold as magic, and frost sorceries are apparently common to them. Even another kind of sorcery, called moon sorcery and connected to the ancient Darkmoon energy, was practiced by Gwyndolin and his knights.

Paledrake Seath, Duke of Lordran, and founder of sorcery.

This being said, they are derived from the research of its founder Seath, an albino Dragon without scales, who sided with the Lords when they waged their war on dragon-kind. To aid them in killing the semi-mortal beings, Seath pillaged the Primordial Crystal, which granted him true immortality.

Welcomed warmly into the newly established royalty, Seath became a Duke, and was permitted to keep the Crystal. He retreated into the Archives, the library castle granted to him along with dukedom, to research the nature of his treasure and discover some other way to achieve immortality without scales. In his research, which drove him at least partially blind and mad, he developed powerful arts using the energy extracted from the crystal. This would inspire the crystal sorceries.

Primordial Crystal, source of Seath's power and immortality, and what inspired crystal sorceries.

Despite his madness and the people he experimented on, Seath's work inspired many scholars, who derived soul sorceries from his study of souls. Rather he continued searching for immortality, and eventually succeeded in connecting the Primordial Crystal with his own life force, becoming a "true undead" in that he could not be killed.

Soon schools like Vinheim's Dragon School were established, expanding on the work of Seath, and developing new sorceries, from clever sound manipulation, to the generation of powerful blasts of soul energy, often called magic. Meanwhile, in the land of Oolacile, their xanthous scholars developed sorceries that manipulated light energy, known as golden sorceries. During the disaster that consumed Oolacile in the Abyss, some of the scholars were driven mad by the Dark and realized the nature of humanity, developing the first dark sorceries seen in modern times.

Big Hat Logan, who developed new sorceries, based off Seath and his powers.

At some point, the famous sorcerer "Big Hat" Logan left the Dragon School, and came across the Archives, where he studied the innovations of Seath. Though his starting attempts were imitations and not as powerful, and sometimes seemed close to the Dark, he eventually succeeded in creating crystal medium to facilitate a stronger bond between souls and sorceries, honing it into piercing solid energy, which would become the world's first crystal sorceries. He even create a imitation spell of Seath's curse-laced crystalline White Dragon Breath, although the mental strain of developing such magic dislodged Logan's anchor for reason, driving him mad like his predecessor.

Two schools would evolve from the fundamental work of Logan. One was located within the court of the Profaned Capital, whose sorcerers also functioned as oracles, and emulated Logan using copies of his staff. They also, through means unknown, recovered a scroll written by Logan himself, containing the sorceries he made in his early days before gaining access to the Archives, and used it to assert themselves as heirs to the sorcerer. This school did not last long, as a certain oracle's relatives triggered a curse called the Profaned Flame, which mutated the sorcerers responsible and burning the capital to the ground.

One of the two famed Crystal Sages, who mastered the crystal sorceries, and kept the memory of Seath and Logan alive to this day.

While the oracles were somewhat unscrupulous in their claim, one other school made good on that very same assertion. This school was started by two preacher twins, who were said to be Logan's true spiritual successors, so that they were known to others as the Crystal Sages. They were masters of the crystal magic, and eventually served as spiritual guides for the sorcerer scholars of the Grand Archives in the kingdom of Lothric. In a pact of uncertain terms, one of the twins traveled to Farron and taught sorceries to the acolytes of the Undead Legion, developed as simplifications to slower, less agile spells, due to the Legion's emphasis on speed over power.

While this happened the other twin stayed with the scholars of Lothric, and like their predecessor - and the "Paledrake" Seath that they honored religiously - they came across destructive knowledge that threatened to pull away their reason, often causing the reader to suddenly die and crystallize their soul. Those scholars would cake themselves in an "ivory wax" that protected themselves from this danger. Eventually both twins would go mad, just as Logan and Seath did, and the king of Lothric, Oceiros, would task the scholars with assisting him with creating the perfect heir. His search for Seath's moonlight not only drove him mad like the other scholars preceding him, but it turned him into an abomination somewhat similar in biology and magical nature to Seath, and he was dethroned and kept in the palace garden, coddling his nonexistent son, protecting his life with his own.

General information

Sorceries are a discipline tied to logic, and for this reason, one must be intelligent enough to cast them. With more intellectual development, one can increase the power of their sorcery. Most sorceries are channeled through a catalyst, so named for its ability to quickly direct magic, and some also have natural sorcery altering properties. While the most common catalysts are some form of staff, there are other tools that can act as a catalyst for casting sorceries.

In the three games, most sorceries focus on dealing magic elemental damage in some form, such as simple arrows to torrential blasts of soul energy. Others provide augmentations to equipment and to oneself, to make combat easier, or simply avoid combat altogether. Sorceries which provide that function mentioned last are usually golden.

Variations

Most of the modern day sorceries are derived from the soul, and the soul they come from is essential to what kind of sorcery it will be classified as. Common sorceries, such as those taught by the Dragon School, are mainly drawn from the manipulation of common souls. Through a complex process of crystallization, this energy can be honed further and become solid magic with properties of both magic and solid items, at which point they are crystal sorceries. While trying to replicate the magic of Seath into an art usable by humans, Logan developed powerful sorceries unique in their strength and nature, but their homing properties are more closely related to the Dark than to the crystal magic of Seath.

In Oolacile, the sorceries were designed to manipulate light, and have functions that none have been able to fully replicate. While sorcery has both offensive and defensive applications, golden sorceries are utilized to completely avoid dangerous situations, whether by lighting the path, concealing oneself as some inconspicuous item, or negating the physicality of magical energies to dispel harmful spells or slow them down. Whether they all happened to be designed like this, or if light is naturally passive like this, is not made certain.

Most of the modern day dark sorceries were created after Manus, a dark sorcerer himself, was awoken.

Some magics are derived from humanity, which is fragmented from a soul, and dark sorceries can be made. Magic of this type are both magical and physical, striking targets with weighty force, and having a natural harmfulness to living things. It is thought that the Dark is highly responsive to emotion, and is drawn towards emotional beings, which allows such magic to tenaciously pursue living things. Just as those who love and hate are undauntingly drawn to the object that they love or hate, humans are able to give this emotion to a portion of their disembodied humanity, which will follow that directive and cause harmful raw Dark to give chase to a target.

Though he was once a frost sorcerer, the Pontiff Sulyvahn had no use for the cold of the painted world, but was still a powerful being without them.

Three forgotten sorceries exist as well. Frost sorceries manipulate the cold of Painted Worlds, and seem to be well known to the sorcerers who inhabit a painted world, where they imbue their weapons with it. They are unfortunately developed only in the painted worlds, and those who have not experienced any true loss, such as those born there naturally, do not share the affinity to the cold as others do, and almost never use them after exiting a painted world. For example, the frost sorcerer Sulyvahn forsook some of his arts when he left the Painted World of Ariandel, but used others to enchant the weapons of Irithyll and coat Anor Londo in the unnatural winter climate.

The other, truly lost art is flame sorcery, founded by the Witch of Izalith. With her family dead or mutated, the daughter Quelana developed a flame manipulation art that she taught to a human, becoming the inventor of pyromancy and leaving behind a lasting legacy for ages to come.

Last is an art called moon sorcery, practiced by Gwyndolin, the god of the Darkmoon. How this art works is not explained, but it allowed Gwyndolin to launch blasts of light blue energy, and is a matter of faith.

Trivia

• It's uncertain whether or not the light of Oolacile sorceries draws upon Gwyn's powers. His soul is closely linked to miracles and particularly to harmful lightning, in contrast to the unusually gentle sorceries of Oolacile.
• Due to the fact that Manus has his own catalyst, and that he uses it with the finesse of a human sorcerer, it's possible that he was already a master of dark sorceries before his humanity ran wild.
• Some of the demons living in Izalith and the Smouldering Lake can use some form of fire spells, though it appears tied to the power of the Flame of Chaos that they were born from, rather than traditional fire sorcery.
  • The Demon Firesage was the last master of the original fire arts, and is one of only two demons, the other being the Stray Demon, that uses a catalyst to cast spells that deal magic damage.
• The spells used by Lothric appear to be "sacred light" variations of Homing Soulmass and Crystal Soul Spear, but their nature is very unusual, and whether or not they are sorceries or miracles is uncertain.
  • Lothric's Holy Sword scales with faith and its skill appears to use the same element as Lothric's spells.
  • This also holds true for Halflight.
• The Old Moonlight sorcery describes the use of souls to grant a physical shape to one's very thoughts. While this is similar to the Moonlight Greastword forged from Seath's tail, it is said to be derived from Midir's memories of a power that came into existence shortly after "the Beginning," implying that sorcery, or the power used to create them, was harnessed shortly after the First Flame ignited.
  • The literal translation of the First Flame's name in Japanese is "fire of beginning".