The timeline is not coherent if you think that Nashandra was the first fragment of Manus that tried to intervene with the events of the world. But we don't know that. What we know for sure is that she was the first fragment that gained a human form, and that she was also the tinniest of those fragments, and because she's the smallest and was aware of her fragility she was in the search for power. The game never states that she is the only fragment of Manus.
This, to me, is an indication that there are other fragments of Manus out there. Of course we didn't know if those fragments took human forms, but even before the DLC was released many speculated that Darklurker was also one of those fragments. The possibility of the existence of other beings like Nashandra was a thing before the DLC.
I need a coffee for this.
Of course there are other fragments that would come in the future of the game out there but the point with Nashandra is she is still the first fragment to set in motion the harvesting plot of the king souls and "break the circle" in game but by the adition of the DLC she is falling apart to be first one and the whole point of the vanilla game falls apart in terms of lore
In Sunken King, Drangelic was the culprit in decimating Shulva habitant, In Iron King they tried to scavenge the black Iron but failed to only damage one efigy of the ashe lady yet she didnt know her "sisters" were already setting in motion their planes or aware the player encounter dark being out there, not even the abyss covenant leader is aware of the abyss chasms in the DLC.
It looks like by ending the game and looking at nashandra's items the new devs in charge of DS is trying to use manus fragments as a plot device to keep the game alive which is a lazy tactic to keep the plot running while you are looking for a sustancial plot to keep the series going but for what purpose?
Ending the game is pointless since you are stuck in the cicles the devs created to make more games so there is no significative consecuences in this game.
Well, to be fair the meaning of the dark has always been very ambiguous: Humans were not the only beings that came from the dark. The opening movie in DS says that Nito, Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith and the Furtive Pygmy came all from the dark. But the only ones that used the dark soul were humans, specifically it was the furtive pygmy who gave it to his descendants... why exactly? to put it in the terms of demon's souls, apparently that gave the humans "clarity". Then in the game we had the Abyss, and I thought that that was the place all beings came from originally (humans, demigods, etc). Then the DLC happened and we had Manus -the primeval human- whose humanity went wild and created the abyss, yet another manifestation of the dark.
Unlike Humans they born with their own flames part of the original flame but Pygmy knew the humans would not survive alone or being hunted/slaved by the other lords so he gave them his Dark Soul but humans were unaware of their potential so Gwyn used them as a fuel for the bonfires but later own humans developed their own potencial of manipulating the souls (Int) and use their devotion of the gods as a source of power (faith).
Pygmy knew the era of the flame will end and the humans were the one of the few creatures that could survive the dark without being heavily corrupted like the other lords of the souls, maybe pygmy was a human too.
And in DSII we have the Darklurker: who interestingly is a fragment of the abyss, we don't know if that means it is or it's not a fragment of Manus. Elana is also a fragment of the abyss (it's never stated that she is a fragment of Manus), we don't know much about Nadalia other than her being a child of dark that came after the Iron king had already disappeared; the only one that we know was born from Manus is Alsanna, who was born from his fears and decided to accompany the Ivory King. Many people think (including myself) that all these children of dark are fragments of Manus, Alsanna confirms that there are others like her, and the pattern: a child of dark that search for a powerful king repeats itself 4 times so it may be possible that the queens are sisters that share the same objective. Since we don't know when they came to be and what they've done since they were born, Elana, Nadalia and Alsanna going to different lands before Nashandra met Vendrick is not exactly a contradiction in my opinion.
The problem is the game script tied the child of the dark as fragments of manus while Darklurker could be a human with the same fate as the four kings and Elana being a Hollowed human using her dark soul for her own prupose to begin the era of dark.
I actually like what they did with the story in the DLC. They finally gave us a "happy" ending.
Guess we have differrent definitions of "Happy"
That's an interesting question... Dark damage is tied to INT & FTH so it depends on your stats?
In the other hand the total damage you make with an infused weapon is split between normal and dark damage therefore if an enemy has high dark resistance the damage you inflict would be less than if you have a not infused weapon + dark pine resin?
In short, I don't know either =P
It caps with Int and Faith and scales with the lowest of those stats so it would problably do less damage compared to a non infused dark weapon
