Then, from the Deep, They came, and found the Light of Lords within the rain

[Greywander]

So some things just write themselves, and this is the case when I stumbled upon the pun "Arc Souls". For reference, the French word for a rainbow is "arc-en-ciel", "bow in the sky" (this is also where we get the word "archery" from, in case you were confused about what kind of "bow" it is). And while this started as kind of a joke, I think there's real potential for this to be developed into an interesting setting.

Rewriting the DS1 intro cinematic, here's how I'd summarize the setting background:

Originally, the world was dry and barren, and then came rain that brought life. The rain created a glorious rainbow, the Arc, and primordial people were drawn to the Arc to discover the Light of Lords. Claiming the power of the Light, the gods conquered the world and built great kingdoms, establishing the Age of Light. But now the Arc is fading and the Age of Light is coming to an end.

From here, there's a couple different ways it could go. My first thought was that the gods, wanting to cling to power and prolong the Age of Light, restart the rain to bring the Arc back, but in doing so they cause more and more land to be drowned beneath the Deep. This makes the rising water level a natural consequence of attempting to prolong the Age of Light. However, while the alternative is obviously to let the Arc fade, I'm not really clear on what this then leads to. Perhaps... the Age of the Deep?

In Dark Souls, humans are the descendants of the Furtive Pygmy who claimed the Dark Soul, one of the original four Lord Souls, and every human bears a shard of the Dark Soul in the form of humanity. The Age of Fire is the age of the gods, but the Age of Dark is supposed to be the age of humanity. If the Deep is analogous to the Dark, then this suggests "humans" are more like aquatic mer-people. However, a problem with this is that it seems like it would be in everyone's best interest to restart the rain and prolong the Age of Light, as this means both that the gods get to reign a little longer and that the Deep will swallow up more of the land. It just doesn't work from a narrative perspective because there's no conflict, so something has to change.

So then I thought, what if the Arc only appears once the rain ends, and the rain is supposed to restart once the Arc fades? The gods, wanting to cling to power and prolong the Age of Light, prevent the rains from coming, but in doing so cause the land to dry up and the Deep to recede. Basically, the world starts to revert to its dead state before the first rain. The Age of the Deep is then simply the Age of Rain, which brings life to the land but also swallows it up.

Expanding on this, what if the rain isn't literal water? The Deep is the mortal realm, and the "dry" land above the Deep is the heavenly realm. During the Age of the Deep, the land is seeded with life but the mortal realm also expands, encroaching on the land of the gods. During the Age of Light, the Deep is allowed to recede but the land will eventually start to dry out. Obviously an eternal Age of Light would lead to the land drying out and returning to a dead state, but it's not immediately clear what the consequences would be of an eternal Age of the Deep. Heaven would drown, and likely the gods as well, which suggests perhaps the gods are themselves necessary for the world to remain healthy. (As an aside, it would be interesting to see a Dark Souls game set during the Age of Dark.)

From there, I'm not sure where to take this, but I feel like I've got a solid start. Maybe one day I'll make my own Souls-like game and use this as the setting.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I like the idea, though I do think the rain should be literal as well. If it does get made into a game, a focus on underwater exploration and combat would be a good unique feature to stand out from the rest of the genre. I think it would make for better visual metaphors, too; the beautiful but abandoned works of the gods crumble into the rising sea, and new life is able to grow and live in the rubble; the depths are teeming with life, but it's alien and frightening and so very different to what came before; the last of the gods smothered by the waves, their pride no match for the force of the world.

[Catullus64]

A possible way to flesh this out:

There was an original Arc of Light that formed at the close of the Age of Ancients. It was an arc in the way we typically see rainbows: a finite curve, with a beginning and an end. When the time came for it to fade, Rainbow Gwyn poured out the water of his body to fashion a new Arc; this one, however, was a circle, although it looks like an arc from the ground: self-contained, confining, with no beginning or end. In other words, unnatural. The Arc became a prison around the world, and the waters of the deep, the wellspring of Humanity, was hedged out. Thus, over time, mankind slowly became afflicted with a dreadful curse known only as the Thirst, which made them lose their sanity and ultimately become Desiccated, preying upon other men and consuming their Souls Water. You can fill out the rest of the story with the analogous terms from there. The player character, the Chosen Thirsting one, will ascend the Arc of Light, and at its peak battle Rainbow Gywn, either to succeed him, pouring out their Water to renew the Arc, or hasten its crumbling and send it crashing down, opening the floodgates of the Deep.

Other analogues that flow (hehe) from this one:

The Witch of Izalith: One of the other gods sought to use magic to recreate the many-colored light of the Arc. This backfired spectacularly, consuming this god and their city in a churning mass of rushed level design maddening color and ruined shapes bent by the light. Imagine a horror aesthetic built around if the refraction of light actually caused distortions in the physical shapes of creatures and things rather than just their images.

Manus and the Abyss: Of course the Age of the Deep isn't all wine and roses. There are nameless, twisted things that lurk in its fathomless depths, including an ancestor of mankind who was twisted into a terrible beast by the creatures of the Deep. I like the idea of the Artorias-figure as a mariner, someone who traversed the deep in a very literal sense to battle it, before being lost at sea and losing his sanity.

Gwyndolin: If the false Arc of Light is fading, it makes sense that one of the gods maintains an illusion of its light throughout the world. That said, I wouldn't have said god be Moon-themed. In Dark Souls, Moon is a reflection of the Sun. But in this game, I would draw upon the archetype of the moon as the changer of ways, the bringer of the tides. I would have New Londo and the Darkwraiths be associated with the Moon instead. Draw upon Bloodborne for ideas of moon-themed horror!

[Greywander]

Well, I don't want it to just be Dark Souls, but water instead of fire. But the cool thing is that you can take an existing setting, make some small tweaks, then follow those changes to their natural conclusion to get something completely original. For example, can't have a rainbow without having the rain first. While Dark Souls starts with the Age of Fire, this setting would necessarily start in an Age of Rain. It's not really an Age of the Deep, since the Deep doesn't even exist yet, though it would gradually start flooding the lowest parts of the world during that first rain. If life emerges from the Deep, then it's likely that the lowest parts of the world are settled first, then covered by the rising Deep.

In some ancient cultures, the ocean is associated with chaos. Light is also often associated with order, perhaps because of the orderly procession of the sun across the sky. So perhaps we're setting ourselves up for a classic Order vs. Chaos dichotomy. Often chaos is depicted as both a creative and destructive force, while order can't create but can maintain something that already exists. Too much order leads to stagnation, however. We can already see this effect in how prolonging the Age of Light would cause the world to dry out and revert to a barren state.

As for the nature of the Deep, I'm still not sure I want it to be literal water, but I also don't want it to simply be a metaphor. We can also ditch the "mortal realm" idea, as it doesn't really mean anything by itself and it would be better to specifically explain how it works rather than referring to it by labels and assuming people know what that's supposed to mean. I'm thinking the rain is some kind of liquid chaos essence. The light can't penetrate far into the Deep, so anyone using the power of Light (e.g. the gods) would find their ability to use that power weaken as they descended further. A human without the power of Light would see little difference above or below the Deep. Actually going into the Deep would probably feel like entering water, but you'd probably walk around like normal under the Deep. That said, sound might be muted and everything might be visually distorted, similar to being underwater. And there would definitely be things that can swim in the Deep. I'm also picturing the Deep having a mirror-like surface, so that those above can't see below, and those below can't see above.

There is the question of the mechanism used to start or stop the rain. I can't help but imagine a lever somewhere that literally opens and closes floodgates, not unlike those in New Londo. But that's... kind of lame, though it would be kind of funny to have such a mundane thing treated as some kind of sacred instrument. It's possible that one day the rain started and just never stopped. Instead of Gwyn fighting against the ancient stone dragons, we instead have a war between those who claimed the Light and the creatures of the Deep, with the end resulting in some kind of mechanism being created to stop the rain, starting the first Age of Light. Hmm, it's possible that this mechanism has been specifically designed so that only those with a strong Light are able to operate it, in order to prevent someone in league with the Deep from opening the floodgate.

It's likely that hydromancy (or general weather magic) would take the place of pyromancy, though I could actually see retaining pyromancy in some form. Perhaps the Deep is strong to Light, but weak to Fire, which dries it out. Pyromancy might be a forbidden art, given how it speeds up the reversion of the world to a barren state. This also means it's likely related to Light in some way. Likely the specific gods of the setting would flesh out some of the aspects of this and give things a proper place in the setting.

One thing I'm struggling with is the relation between the Light and the Deep, and what this means for our analogue of souls. In Dark Souls, the Lord Souls are found within the First Flame, and soul items seem to resemble flames. A strong enough soul is needed to link the fire, during which that soul is consumed as fuel to renew the flame. Even the titular Dark Soul is depicted as a flame during the intro cutscene. Everything is flame, so it all just works. But here, we've drawn a distinction between the Deep and the Light. That said, a connection still exists; namely, that the rain creates the rainbow. So the idea of collecting, say, "dew" and spending it to make your own personal light stronger would still make sense.

Hmm, I feel like I'm getting somewhere, but there's still a long way to go before I have a solid setting. Weirdly, this isn't the first time I've come up with a setting that has a heavy association with rain. But I don't know that there's much I can reuse from that other setting, they seem pretty distinct from one another. I might still use that other setting for something, too, so I don't know that I want to cannibalize it anyway.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

There is the question of the mechanism used to start or stop the rain. I can't help but imagine a lever somewhere that literally opens and closes floodgates, not unlike those in New Londo. But that's... kind of lame, though it would be kind of funny to have such a mundane thing treated as some kind of sacred instrument. It's possible that one day the rain started and just never stopped. Instead of Gwyn fighting against the ancient stone dragons, we instead have a war between those who claimed the Light and the creatures of the Deep, with the end resulting in some kind of mechanism being created to stop the rain, starting the first Age of Light. Hmm, it's possible that this mechanism has been specifically designed so that only those with a strong Light are able to operate it, in order to prevent someone in league with the Deep from opening the floodgate.

Hmm, perhaps a beam of concentrated light/Light shooting into the sky, clearing out the clouds in a large ring? You still get clouds (and thus Rain) on the fringes, so the Deep still rises, but oh so slowly, and in the meantime, the lands dry and wither.

Could the Light that powers it be absorbed? Perhaps the guardian of the mechanism, on the verge of defeat, absorbs the Light they were guarding in a last, desperate bid for victory? Or perhaps the more selfish gods want this source of easy power for themselves. Someone could steal it, either on their own, or enabled by the main character conveniently defeating the guardian.

EDIT: Walked the dog, and had a few more random thoughts.

Spoiler: Light/Deep divide

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This reminded me of a line from Startide Rising, where the captain notes that the surface of water is a barrier to both humans and dolphins. For humans, it reflects light, leaving them unable to see what lies beneath. For dolphins, it reflects their sonar, leaving them just as blind to the far side, but via a very different mechanism. Not sure how to apply that to this world, but I like the idea that each side fears the other not just because they're less powerful out of their element, but because their powers don't let them see the far side of the barrier, making it mysterious and thus scarier.

Spoiler: Stolen Light

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The Light could even be stolen from the mechanism as an inciting incident. The player/MC initially wants to get it back prolong the Age of Light, but learn more and more about the importance of the Rain and start to question the morality of maintaining the Mechanism.

Spoiler: The Guardian

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I'm picturing a colossus of steel and stone, powered by a furnace (in their chest, or a separate power source that golem needs to defend?) so it has no need for the Light it guards. Built to kill anything that comes too close, it is otherwise mostly mindless so it cannot be corrupted, tricked, or subverted. But the Age has drawn on too long, and its furnace burns low (perhaps it supplements its fuel with the bodies of its victims?). Faced with destruction/diminishment, it makes exactly the same choice its creators did: anything, everything, is an acceptable sacrifice to continue on as it is, and it absorbs the Light it was meant to guard into itself (perhaps it also sheds parts of itself related to the furnace, that it no longer needs, like a smokestack, IDK). As clouds start to fill the sky for the first time in mortal memory, the arena is thrown into sharp contrast between the shadows and the brilliant light leaking out of the gaps and cracks in the colossus. The guardian itself now fights with renewed vigor; faster and stronger than before, but perhaps more spastic (and perhaps more easily damaged, mechanically having less health and/or visually displaying more damage as the fight goes on).

Anyway, those are my ideas. Keep, modify, or discard them as you please.

[Greywander]

I have some more thoughts on the mechanism design to stop the rain, and how it plays into the story. During the first rain, the Lords of Light fought against the Deep, and as the Deep threatened to drown the whole world they constructed a barrier to stop the rain. The barrier can't be opened or closed, which was a bit shortsighted, but at the time they felt it was more important to stop the rain now and worry about what might come later.

As the rainbow begins to fade they realize they need rain to renew the rainbow and maintain the Age of Light, but they can't open the barrier without completely destroying it. So instead they start sacrificing people, extracting the "water" (whatever it actually is) from them and sprinkling it on the rainbow to renew it. Obviously, this doesn't come anywhere close to actual rain, and it's simply draining the water out of the world more quickly. Eventually, "Rainbow Gwyn" starts tapping into his own reserves to prolong the rainbow, but it still isn't enough. Someone else then tasks the player with defeating the Lords of Light, taking the water from them, and using everything they have to renew the rainbow. I do worry this might be too close of an analogue to linking the fire, though.

But this sets us up with a trichotomy: the player can (a) collect all that rainwater and sprinkle it on the rainbow, drying out the world a bit more and unnaturally extending the Age of Light, (b) they can abandon the rainbow and allow it to fade, or (c) they can destroy the barrier and unleash the rain once more. Pretty much all of these are different forms of "bad endings" (which is important because if there's a clear "right answer" then it raises the question of why the conflict even existed in the first place, which was the problem with a barrier that could be opened and closed at will), but of course different NPCs would lie to the player to try to convince them that one of these three options is totally for the best. Destroying the barrier would likely be a secret ending that requires completing a specific questline involving someone aligned with the Deep, similar to the Lord of Hollows ending from DS3.

As for the barrier itself, it seems fairly on brand for it to be a literal stone wall. Maybe there's some kind of river of this chaos juice somewhere high atop the tallest mountain, and its been dammed up to stop it from flowing. The big rainbow thing probably lies under this dam, so you'd have to climb up there anyway to sprinkle water on it. Heck, how about the whole apparatus is on the moon? Perhaps there was no moon originally, and one day it showed up and brought the rain with it. Not sure how you'd access the moon, unless it stays in a fixed spot so a tower could be built leading up to it. Maybe you have to plunge into the Deep in a specific spot and weird chaos magic warps space and time to allow you to just walk to the moon.

I do like the idea of the Deep having a reflective surface that makes it impossible to see into or out of. Thematically, abilities derived from Light would weaken as you descend further into the Deep, but I wonder if this should be an actual game mechanic? Likewise, certain abilities related to the Deep probably don't work as well outside of it. This also raises a question I've been avoiding, which is: what exactly is the "light", and is there a "deep" analogue to it? If the player collects droplets to be used as XP to strengthen their inner light, it means they have a dual nature as both a creature of the Deep and a creature of Light. Is every creature like this? Are the Lords of Light like this? What about the creatures of the Deep? Are there Lords of the Deep?

So far we've established that all life came from the Deep, so it makes sense that even the Lords of Light might need to collect droplets of the Deep to strengthen their light, but what about creatures that never claimed any of the light within the rain? Perhaps creatures without light are basically mindless, so anything intelligent must have claimed a light. This, rather than drying out, might also serve as the analogue for going hollow, having your light dim and go out. But this also means that the Lord(s) of the Deep probably claimed the Light of Lords as well, but like the Dark Soul it's a different kind of Light that aligns with the Deep. Is there any kind of light that actually works better underwater? Or perhaps something light-adjacent, like electricity? Hmm, lightning could weirdly exemplify the chaotic nature of the Deep; extremely powerful, but ephemeral. Normally I would have associated lightning with the Light, but in a way it still sort of is, just a different kind of light. Lightning doesn't usually happen underwater, though, but it does usually happen during rain. Hmm...

Edit: The ephemeral nature of lightning might also explain the difference between mortals and gods. The gods got the rainbow light, making them immortal, but humans and other denizens of the Deep got the lightning light, which is powerful but unstable and can only exist for a moment (in the grand scheme of things, this "moment" corresponds with the human lifespan). This also coincides with the nature of chaos as both creation and destruction, constantly cycling new life instead of just prolonging the old.

[Greywander]

I had this on my mind again, so I had to come to this thread to lay my thoughts out. I'm leaning more towards the Deep being literal water, but humans can't swim but can somehow breathe underwater. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but I don't think it's any stranger than some of the things Dark Souls does.

I think I said this previously, but I want to reaffirm that water is chaos and light is order, as that has big implications for the lore. Light also appears to be analogous to the "soul" from Dark Souls. So far, I think I've nailed down three, possibly four, types of "souls".

Prismatic
The light of the eternal rainbow, it proceeds from deep to dry. This is the "main" light, similar to how most bosses in Dark Souls had white/yellow flame-like souls, while a few had "corrupted" souls of a different nature. It is capable of lasting indefinitely so long as it is supplied with the water of chaos to fuel itself. Most of the Lords of Light have prismatic lights, and draw additional power from the Great Arc or whatever the First Flame analogue ends up being called.

Storm (Lightning)
The ephemeral light of the deep, it proceeds from deep to deep. This is the light of the Lords of the Deep, and is the only one that can comfortably exist within the Deep. As the Deep is chaos-incarnate, both creative and destructive, this light is ephemeral, existing one moment and gone the next. Basically this just means that creatures with storm lights have limited lifespans, though this lifespan can be extended within the Deep.

Flame
The lingering light of cinders, it proceeds from dry to dry. The Prophets of Ash seek to return the world to a barren state using heretical flame. Rather than being fueled by water and rain, it destroys them. I think it could be an interesting mechanic if the player is able to choose what type of light they have, or change it during play (with different types of light having special mechanics), but that then begs the question of how using "raindrops" or whatever as XP would work. Likely there would be a cosmetic change to "ash" instead, but the change might be more involved than that.

So this is where things get interesting, because I think I'd like to leave open the possibility that the barren world of ash that exists before the rain is actually what's left after the Age of Fire from Dark Souls. Basically, the world you see at the end of the Ringed City DLC is how this setting is before the rain. But I'd keep it ambiguous, neither confirming nor refuting that idea.

Dark
Honestly, I'm not sure how the Dark would fit into this setting. Would it be associated with the Deep, or with Light? Instead of being the lack of light, I'm leaning more towards it being its own kind of light, or a corruption of the other three kinds of light. This would allow for black flame, black lightning, and black rainbows, which seems hella metal.

By process of elimination, the dark must proceed from dry to deep. This... has some interesting implications. It implies that the Dark might somehow be involved in the rain beginning in the first place. If we consider this in the context of this setting being a spiritual sequel to Dark Souls, then this also casts the Age of Dark in a whole new context. The Age of Dark is actually the Age of Rain, since the Dark brought the rain to heal the world after it was scorched to a barren wasteland by Gwyn's never ending Age of Fire. It's little wonder flame would be considered heretical in this new world.

This could also lead into something like the World Tendency mechanic from Demon Souls, where tendency shifts between deep and dry. The drier, the lower the surface of the Deep would become, the more barren the world, and some NPCs might be missing or dead. The wetter, the higher the surface of the Deep would rise, and the more vibrant the world would become, likely with more or stronger enemies. Or something. This is a thing to put more thought into later.

Now, let's talk about the Deep for a little bit. Specifically, I want to cover ice, and how it fits into this setting. If water is chaos and light is order, then ice must be some form of chaos that has been subjugated by order, a fusion of water and light. Since this exemplifies what the Lords of Light are trying to achieve, I think this merits giving ice a special place within the setting, and one of the Lords of Light is likely a powerful ice magic user. Speaking of magic...

This brings us to a system where there are likely six different elemental damage types: prismatic, lightning, fire, water, ice, and dark. This post was prompted in a big way by some thoughts I had about how the sorcery system would work, so much of the above was merely laying the ground work to go into a discussion about that. See, I don't feel like FP or limited spell uses is a very good system, but I recognize that magic has to be limited in some way. For miracles, I'm leaning toward a system where you gain some resource (e.g. "souls") by killing enemies, and that resource fuels your miracles. This prevents you from spamming healing spells out of combat, but still allows you to keep chugging along on a pure miracle build without ever strictly "running out". But for sorcery, I had something a little different in mind.

Instead, I was thinking that sorceries would use some kind of elemental balance mechanic. Basically, you'd have a meter that would go from wet (or deep) to dry, and some spells would shift it more towards deep and others more towards dry. The idea is that you need to alternate in order to keep it in the middle (with it slowly moving back to the center over time), but I also like the idea of having a risk vs. reward system for pushing it to the extremes. I'm thinking either you'd take damage or get some kind of debuff if you get too far towards one extreme or the other, but some spells would get stronger. This is where a lot of the "deep to dry" stuff comes in.

Based on the above descriptions, it would seem that prismatic sorceries would get stronger the further towards the deep end you are, but would shift your balance towards dry. Storm sorceries would get stronger with more deep, and would also shift it towards deep. Flame sorceries get stronger when drier, and shift it towards dry. Dark sorceries would get stronger when drier, and shift it towards deep. But then what about water and ice sorceries? Ice seems like it would match prismatic, being stronger when wetter but making things drier. Water seems like it would match storm. This in turn makes me wonder if ice should be folded into prismatic, and water into storm, but I think there might be good reasons to keep them separate. Ice would be more effective against deep-aligned monsters, whereas prismatic would be less effective. Being too "wet" might reduce lightning resistance, but not affect or even increase water resistance.

This seems like it would create a much more interesting system, where players have to juggle different spells in order to keep their balance in the right place, or to leverage an advantage based on where their balance is at the moment. There seems to be a natural cycle where, if we start as wet, would go prismatic/ice -> fire -> dark -> storm/water, taking advantage of wetness to enhance rainbow/ice magic, then moving to fire as we get drier, and so on. Huh, in the context of being a spiritual sequel to Dark Souls, that's a suspiciously convenient cycle, mirroring the Age of Fire -> Age of Dark -> Age of Rain -> Age of Light cycle. Perhaps the Prophets of Ash aren't so crazy, as this implies another Age of Fire is meant to follow the current Age of Light.

Another option to consider is that with six elements and only four "X to Y" combos, we could take two of those elements and make one always a moderating force (pushes toward the center regardless of direction) and one a, uh, "radicalizing" (?) force (pushes towards the extreme regardless of direction). I'm just not sure which elements make the most sense to map to these.

Alternatively, maybe this isn't for sorcery, but some form of "hydromancy" or weather-based magic. Sorcery could then use some other system, although that's more or less a semantic distinction. Regardless, this would be one type of magic available to players.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now.