User blog:BigBadSquid/Pure Evil Proposal: Seath the Scaleless

Here's the one and only Paledrake: Seath the Scaleless.



What's the Work
Dark Souls is a dark fantasy role playing video game set in the world of Lordran. In the beginning, the world was unformed, a vast emptiness covered in fog and Everlasting Dragons. Then the First Flame was discovered that brought life and death. Using shards and souls that developed from the flame, the dragons were defeated by the lords using new brought power to remove their scales that were thought to be impenetrable enough to grant them immortality. One such dragon was Seath the Scaleless, who chose to betray his kind as he lacked the scales of immortality.

Who is Seath the Scaleless/What does he do
Because he was born without scales of immortality, Seath grew envious of the other dragons and chose to aid Lord Gwyn in killing off his own species, which he did with shear pleasure. In gratitude of assistance, Gwyn granted Seath a Bequeathed Lord Soul Shard and was promoted dukedom.

An artifact that Seath stole from the dragons was the Primordial Crystal, which heals any wound he is struck with. With the Primordial Crystal, Seath became immortal like he sought; but a crystal that lasted eternal should it not break was not enough for Seath, thus he sent his minions, the Channelers, across Lordran to gather human specimen for him to conduct experimentation on, determined to find the reasoning why he lacked scales in the first place. His experiments resulted in him torturing countless individuals with crystals until they became crystallized monsters. His obsession with finding scales of immortality drove Seath to insanity, resulting in him becoming a hollow undead. His archive turned from a library into a prison, tainted by his selfish pursuit for pure immortality.

Mitigating Factors
Now Seath does have somewhat of a Freudian Excuse. "Somewhat". The only reason he turned against the dragons in the first place is because he lacked the scales of immortality. The dragons saw his case as a disease, and its what lead to both his madness and murderous envy of the other dragons. However, even if you could call this backstory sympathetic, any sympathy for the Paledrake is obsolete compared to his cruel and unforgiving acts of torturous experiments on innocent people just to discover his scaleless case.

Heinous Standards
Many characters in Dark Souls have very ambiguous moralities. They could be seen as both heroes and/or villains due to their actions in the game. Particularly the lords, who all had honorable and redeeming qualities about them, making it very sorrowful when you are forced to kill them as hollows. Gwyn, Nito, Witch of Izalith, Four Kings, all of them have tragedy to define who they are.

Not the case with Seath. Unlike the other carriers of Lord Souls and Bequeathed Lord Souls, he is straight up evil. Nobody is as heinous as Seath, they do not kill off their own kind in the way of Seath, and none of them conduct experiments as he does. Seath does not do anything to help prolong Gwyn's kingdom or the Age of Fire, instead he went his own way and conducted his torturous experiments on countless individuals in pursuit of his immortality.

The only character who I can think of to almost rival Seath’s heinousness is Smough due to his talent of grinding the bones of his executed victims as food seasoning. But at least Smough took some honor in assisting Ornstein in guarding Anor Londo. Unlike Seath who has no honor to his name.

Final Verdict
I believe Seath does meet the criteria for Pure Evil, so yes.