Hey no worries! It's appreciated, I don't mind having my findings questioned because in the end in helps test their truthiness.
There are two reasons I'm pretty confident that being indicted is required for Darkmoon invasions occurring outside of Dark Anor Londo. I've spent a pretty large number of hours hosting with only "PvE" sin, and it has never allowed me to be invaded by a Darkmoon. Once I wind up in the Book of the Guilty for getting indicted at least once, then the invasions start happening. Additionally, someone else wrote a script/mod for the PC version, which works in conjunction with DSCfix, allowing you to block all outside traffic and only make guaranteed connections with your friends online. Under controlled conditions, the invasions were only working with indictment sin as well.
Like you said, there is the random glitch that happens every now and again of someone spawning in as the wrong phantom type, so that could explain the first occurrence.
Hugh_G_Johnson wrote:[color=gold][font=pure]I've been invaded by SoVs outside Dark Anor Londo on a few occasions. I think it was an invasion glitch at least once, but on one character it happened twice in a row so I checked my sin. I had 1 sin and remembered I hadn't absolved after killing Gwyndolin for SLB, I absolved and the darkmoon invasions stopped...
How did you check your sin and know you have 1? Did you check the Book of the Guilty and find yourself in there? If you did, then that means you were indicted at some point, because only indictment sins are counted. You can't actually absolve those, but if you checked the book after getting invaded and saw 1, then it would probably make sense that the invasions would stop happening by coincidence. Every time you're killed by a Darkmoon invader, your sin count is reduced by 1 (but it can take a little while to update in the book). There may even be a bug that sometimes causes the sin count to get reduced by 1 regardless if you die directly to them or soon after the encounter, I'm not sure. So that point could have gotten reduced back to 0 on its own after the invasions, which would cause them to cease.
Hugh_G_Johnson wrote:[size=16]
For the last Darkstalker event in Anor Londo, Squashy_Avocado hosted in Dark Anor Londo. I was a phantom in his world for a lot of it as well... and he was never invaded by a blue of any sort. I didn't think that was possible, but he said he absolved after destroying the Gwynevere Illusion. Perhaps this is possible if you are a Darkmoon?
I've sometimes had to wait a very long time for the blue phantoms to start showing up in Dark Anor Londo, over a half hour. If he a spent a long time hosting, perhaps there is something to being a Darkmoon there that prevents fellow Darkmoon invasions. I'm not sure, but I can try and test that.
But regarding absolution after destroying Gwynevere, like I said, the game
allows you to, but it doesn't really work. You can pay for it, and Oswald you will tell you that you no longer have any PvE sin after paying for it, though the game will automatically refresh every once and a while and put that sin back on you. I'm not entirely certain what the trigger for refreshing it is, but warping to Anor Londo and back to the Parish seemed sufficient. When people say you can't remove the sin of Gwynevere, you actually can remove it, but it just comes back.