The Ringed City seems to be set at the very end of time itself. We see civilization from Dark Souls 3 itself in the same state of ancient ruin that we found Anor Londo - or indeed, even worse, as they are being crushed together in the Dreg Heap.
While Lothric and its transitory lands appear to be quite post-post-post-apocalyptic already throughout the game, the Ringed City appears as if it may take place long past whatever ending we secure in the main game.
Now, time is of course very funky in Dark Souls - it's even implied in the original game that we might be traveling to different eras depending on where in Lordran we go. Sen's Fortress, for example, which in-game seems to serve primarily as a middle-dungeon that just blocks the way to Anor Londo, is referred to at one point as a "plane," which in fantasy RPG stuff usually refers to a separate but connected universe.
Indeed, in DS3's main game, the Untended Graves area, hidden behind Oceiros' room in Lothric Castle, is baffling - implied to either be a past version of the Cemetery of Ash, or possibly a future one, or maybe an alternate universe, which of course is extra-confusing because while you can physically access it from Lothric Castle, your own primary version of Firelink Shrine is in a separate area - though the Untended Graves' darkness seems not to match what the world looks like in the rest of the game.
Anyway, time is weird.
I'm intending to go with the Usurp the Flame ending, because in a game that seems to be about the futility of endlessly repeated cycles, at least the folks of Londor are trying to do something different.
The game examines some of the irony of the notion that "the only constant is change." We find that the tradition of linking the fire - which in the first game was only done by Gwyn and potentially the player character - became a tradition, and while this cycle of reigniting the fire meant constant renewal of the world, by the time of Dark Souls 3, it seems to have hit diminishing returns, such that Prince Lothric, who was basically born and raised specifically to sacrifice himself to prolong the fire, has decided it's not worth it.
The Ringed City is meant to be a kind of gilded cage that Gwyn created for the pygmies. Basically, using the Dark Soul - which seems to have been the origin of the Abyss (Manus, who the general consensus holds to be the Furtive Pygmy from the creation myth, is also called "Father of the Abyss.") The story goes that Gwyn feared the dark power of the pygmies (as he was sort of a giant/god, the "pygmies" seem to be just ordinary humans) but also had to do something to thank them for their aid in defeating the Dragons, and so he created this "reward" that was really a way to isolate them.
This raises some questions, such as how humans became a part of this world's overall populace if they were all stuck there. Also, I don't exactly know what characters like Havel count as - he seems to have been a friend of Gwyn's? But he's definitely human sized.
Anyway, the Ringed City seems to be set at the farthest point in the future that Dark Souls gets to - presumably the only thing that outlives it is the Painted World that the unnamed painter girl makes using the Blood of the Dark Soul as pigment. It's left, I think very much intentionally vague, but my sense is that the world of Lordran/Lothric/whatever is more or less left to die - though I also don't know what that really entails and whether there's a chance at rebirth for it - maybe through a different means than the flame.
Gael, who first sought us out to go to Ariandel's painted world, has left us signs to lead us to the Ringed City, and it seems to me that he got there long before we did. We see various hollows that are dressed in similar slave-knight red hoods (granted, these could also just be fellow slave-knights) and there are also the Ringed Knights with the big Darksign-like hole in their chests - which the transformed Gael also has (I have not gotten to that fight, to be clear, but I've seen videos.)
We also see creatures who seem to be wearing blue cleric clothing, complete with the big back-shell, but have devolved into bizarre quadrupeds and yet still cast miracles.
We also find these odd locust-people, who preach about the merits of the Abyss.
Hell, we even see the Dragonslayer Armor just randomly in a corner of the bog in the city who comes at us for a rematch (having kind of cheated to 1-shot it with a summoned NPC, this time I one-shot it just by having apparently "gitten gud," (though the pre-bog section with all the Harald Knights took me many attempts to get through.)
Anyway, while overrun with horrifying men-turned-monster, the city itself is actually weirdly lively, with greenery growing and not quite as much rubble and decay as we've seen in places like Lothric.
In any Dark Souls game (and Bloodborne,) I often find myself wondering what these places looked like when things were actually functioning properly. But if the Ringed City was specifically hidden away in the future, was there ever a point in which it was a normal, livable place?
Dark Souls lore. Never any clear answers.
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