Huge chest 'scar', why?

Sorry if this has already been discussed, couldn't find any info on it except some ramblings on gamefaqs.
Today I noticed that huge chest scar(not sure if it is actually a scar) on the hollow PC:


Is it to mark the loss of humanity?
It looks like some kind of parasite to me but the firekeeper souls also look a lot like it.

Can't explain for certain but I agree with everything you say, it's probably there to mark the loss of one's Humanity and, yes, it does look like a FK Soul though I believe that's just more an overlap in design than any concrete lore link.

As for it being a parasite, I can see why you would think that looking at it but I highly doubt it is one. When you have the Egghead parasite, you lose in your intake of souls, I believe that in keeping with uniformity you would then lose souls when in Hollow form instead of in Human form.

My first silly thought was: Wow, surgery has come a long way since the middle ages.

Hmm, I agree with pendant here.

I think it is probably the humanity quickly dissipating and ripping apart your body.

One thing you might not know is that you can find a similar wound like this in another game after getting your heart ripped out. I've always figured that it could show where the darksign is located inside your body.

However, it may also be a practice done by the Way of White to attempt to stop you from coming back, but the only problem there is that they sort of already know if they ship you to the Undead Asylum so it might just be tradition to do this to the undead before they leave to the Asylum. Think of it in the same sense of why Egyptians would remove organs from a corpse after the person has passed away.

Last hypothesis, the soul itself normally is said to be located near the heart if that is the case they may have done organ removal in order to preserve the soul of the deceased. If that is the case they have either failed to remove the soul or our character is a different type of person entirely. Personally I think they just failed to remove the soul, especially if many of the other undead NPC's can still retain their memories.

The humanity or soul removal theory sounds probable. And it does seem to be common practice in the game, because all the Zombies have the same mark on their chest where the heart would be.
As for the darksign location, that might be true. My first assumption about the chest mark was, it could be the firekeeper soul which draws you back to the bonfire, but since it's clearly the darksign that draws you back this is much more likely.

Uh hello, I've been pretty curious about that scarring tissue as well, a few theories I've concocted over the course of my souls play-through.

" Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. "

I think that the dark sign completely destroys the heart, both literally and metaphorically, the "undead" no longer has a use for it, and perhaps the Dark sign has scarred their flesh, much like hollowing has made their skin like that of a dreg.

Perhaps the heart scar is the end symbol for an undead who has truly lost all their humanity? They have lost their life, the one thing that they were able to cling to, and without it, another part of their body is scarred and deformed.

but andre got one too...

Andre's scars are quite different:

  They are on both sides of the chest and not as pronounced like on the hollow PC, his forearms also show signs of similar scarring, I think those are work-related.

Maybe that's the Darksign that brands the undead?

The Darksign is a circle, we know this from the intro and from the item itself.

I agree with the humanity part

but I completely disagree with the Darksign part


after many Archives research (why people never read them?), it appears that the Darksign is what replaces the eye in undead form, hence undeads eyes glowing Yellow/fiery

I think the darksign is just an item that you can use, I tried to look at the eyes of the chosen undead when I could but I didn't see the darksign where your eyes would be.

So I think I'm going with the humanity hypothesis for the answer to the scar.

It shows the dark sign in the opening after it shows the maiden looking at an undead's face; this hints towards it being in the eye.

Also, the undead likely still has their heart. In logic, if not in lore. They can die of both drowning and poison, which suggests a working circulatory system.

I thought that too until I looked and as far as it goes in-game it seems as though you wouldn't be able to see it on your characters eyes. I'd think the only other thing is that the darksign is something that is planted into your subconscious when you die, explaining the reason for why it zooms out of an undead's head in the opening. 

It may also be what keeps your character alive after their brain shuts down, which could explain a lot as far as mechanics goes. The way the mechanics work when you use the darksign ensures that you make it back to the bonfire but without your souls and maybe even in a lore sense your some of your memories. Since the flow of time is distorted too, maybe even because of the darksign itself, it's as if the events never happened either. Who knows? Maybe if an NPC used it a few to many times, their memories would fade away and they could hollow from that.

Either that or it was just a jump-cut.

When you're brain shuts down? What do you mean?

You're character can speak, and as such can clearly think. You also are still moving when you start to fade out from death, hinting that you don't quite "die" before you get brought back.

Correct, and I think this is because of the Darksign and not the brain. Since the brain does in fact shut down when someone dies maybe the Darksign ends up being responsible for our actions afterwards and through-out the game.

However, I have no idea if this is true or not.

GrinTwist wrote:Correct, and I think this is because of the Darksign and not the brain. Since the brain does in fact shut down when someone dies maybe the Darksign ends up being responsible for our actions afterwards and through-out the game.

However, I have no idea if this is true or not.

 It would be a good assumption, but if you ask me, all the signs point towards the character still being, technically, "alive." The sentience, and working heart/lungs (and presumably things like liver/kidneys to neutralize poison/toxin); everything seems to point too a functioning body.

In which case, it seems obvious to me that the Darksign is a link/tether/anchor, such as that of a lich (or Voldemort from Harry Potter, for some people). The body ties, but the Darksign kicks in and drags the soul back to the body (or maybe even a new one).

Hmm, that would actually explain a lot as far as what happens to the soul of the person. 

If that is the case, I don't think the darksign has an actual phsyical manifestation on the body than. Since this is the soul of the furitive pygmy though maybe it's a representation of the original soul and how it spreads down the line of men and women. Actually, if anything, the Darksign is probably located on the soul of the individual themselves. Something like the original dark soul blending with the individual's soul if that makes any sense.

Here I wonder, what defines "Soul" in a dark souls sense? Because we absorb the "souls" of other undead we kill.

Humanity is the pieces of the dark soul, right? Perhaps the "soul" we have when we hollow is trace pieces of humanity.

I think that when we hollow, all that is left is these faint traces of humanity, and we do not "hollow" in the sense of others, whats with determination and all that.

Or perhaps the Darksign is a placeholder of a soul, being located inside the body, working as a "soul" in the sense that it keeps the "Host", if you will, alive.

It does not however bring with it the things normal souls do, like sanity and all, instead forcing the host to collect souls and humanity to keep themselves focused and basically "alive"