Dark Souls Etymology Analysis: Izalith and the Names of Pyromancers
Nov. 19, 2016Soulsborne series games are best known for their fun and challenging gameplay, as now they’ve practically become a synonym for a “hardcore game”, even giving birth to such term as “soulslike”. However, it’s not only the well-balanced difficulty which encourages players to learn from their mistakes and the sense of achievement one gets after overcoming a challenging boss that makes so many people love these games.
A great and important thing about the Souls games is the extreme attention to the details the developers pay when creating these grim, forlorn and dangerous worlds along with a refined and somewhat subtle narrative allows us to explore the world ourselves.
In particular, an amazing job is done by the developers when picking the names for the places and characters of their stories. These names are actually meaningful and not only describe their characters well (and often the same name fits a character in more than one way!), but also are composed in linguistically correct ways, which makes the Dark Souls series somewhat akin to works by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Yet, similarly to many things in the Souls games, these meanings are somewhat easy to miss, although understanding the meanings of the characters’ names might actually help to understand their personalities and stories better, so researching them in etymology/lore videos has become my hobby and I hope you’ll see it yourselves. What a delight it is to find the “hidden” meaning in the name that at first appeared to be “just a name”.
And for those who didn’t play the first part of Dark Souls yet, I’d like to say that Izalith is pretty much the rawest, the most problematic area in the entire game both in terms of location design and possible lore inconsistencies that I also cover in the title video, so if there is some location that might be called “the worst made”, it’s most likelyLost Izalith, as even mentioned by the developers themselves in the interview for the Design Works Artbook for Dark Souls I. For instance, did you know that theOld Demon Kingwe fight in Dark Souls 3 was actually meant to be a boss in the first Dark Souls game but never made it into the game due to the development problems and deadlines ? And he’s pretty likely included as the optional boss in the third game to fix this mistake of the past. But you might get an impression of how interesting the game is by seeing how interesting the “rawest” part of it is.
I’d like to leave the discussion of the deeper etymological aspects and root elements of the words for the title video where I discuss them in proper detail and mostly limit the text part to an overview of the story reflected in the names of the places and characters.
Izalith, the homeland for the Witch of Izalith – one of the Great Lords who challenged the Everlasting Dragons of minerals at the dawn of Age of Fire in order to conquer what was later shaped into the Dark Souls world we know it now. Once Izalith was a developed land but it was lost in attempt to artificially re-create the First Flame by the Witch’s fire magic, as the original Flame began to fade, bringing the Age of Dark ever closer. It is said that the Witch of Izalith was rather driven by her ambitions, rather than a desire to prolong the Age of Fire, and maybe what happened in result was a price paid for such ambition. Instead of the First Flame, the Witch gave birth to the Flame of Chaos that brought terrible demons, turning inhabitants of Izalith into creatures that were never meant to exist, and turning the Witch herself into theBed of Chaosand all her children, except for one, the Witches of Chaos and her youngest son into malformed monsters bound to burn with the Flame of Chaos.
The only Daughter of Chaos to escape a such a terrible destiny wasQuelana(and, as it is discussed in the title video, the meaning of her name actually tells us of it right away), who now eternally wanders the swamps of the Blighttown, located above her lost home, buried under the stone. However, Quelana wasn’t just apathetically mourn her losses, but, learning from the mistakes of her mother, she developed a fire magic art that, as she hoped, would teach its users to fear, tame and control flame (and, as it is actually discussed in the title video, it might be directly related to the meaning of name “Izalith”), and she agreed to teach a human pupil, apparently hoping that he would be able to achieve the control of the dangerous flame where her mother failed – Salaman, the Master of Pyromancy, a man from the Great Swamps who was the first of humans to master this fire art and founded the first school of this art taking Carmina, who further developed the art, as his pupil.
As for the fate of the other daughters of Chaos, we actually get to know the fate of two of them: one – kind-hearted Fair Lady, who even being turned into a monster, still yearned to help the others, to provide the comfort for the suffering (such asEingyi, a sick pyromancer who developed a spell so awful, that it was deemed heresy even among the heretics of the Great Swamp) even if it meant a perpetual suffering for her, and her sisterQuelaag, the only one she could communicate to, despite her numerous servants she saved from blightpus, who cared about her maintaining a domain in the old bell tower above the Ruins of Lost Izalith.
In the title video I discuss the etymology of names of the mentioned places and characters (not only them of course, but also other related names not mentioned in this brief story overview) which, I hope, will be interesting for you, as they’re so meaningful and actually might help to understand the characters and the story even better, and are simply cool in the way how they fit their characters, even if upon the first look they might appear as “another fantasy character name”.
Thereisanother character wearing the attire of Daughters of Chaos who seems to have retained human form, only it might be considered a contradiction with other things stated in the game regarding Quelana being the only one who escaped the outbreak of Chaos, and it’s discussed in more detail in the video.
The etymological roots of the Souls series is a fascinating delve into the world of language and symbolism and and an unexpected source of marvel for fans of the game. Thoughts on everything explored here? Share them in the comments!
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OswaldFromCarim
I enjoy playing Dark Souls and researching its lore, especially from the etymological approach, and thus I developed a hobby of making videos discussing various interesting things related to it (also, once I even came up with some fan-fic lore story, lol). Being a Souls fan it’s no wonder that I also love mangas by Kentaro Miura and works of JRR Tolkien. Generally I enjoy history, architecture and historical linguistics.
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