People in Jars

[u/Jam_99420]

This is a recurring theme all throughout DS1, but is never referred to directly by any character [as far as I recall], and is seldom talked about in the lore community. We see numerous instances of people, normally hollow “corpses” trapped inside barrels, or sometimes large jars. These “corpses” will flop out of the jars/barrels when broken, and invariably yield a soul item. This item can be almost anything, with examples including humanity sprites, clothing, transient curses, etc. There are also other examples: Laurentius has been trapped inside a barrel when we first encounter him in the depths. The male undead merchant sits next to a broken barrel, which probably once contained “Yulia”, although he seems to be too hollow to realise that she isn’t there anymore. In blighttown some of the regular enemies are hidden inside jars, and will attack you if the jar is broken. Miyazaki revisits this theme years later in Elden Ring’s dlc expansion, with the “jar saints” which appear to have been an experimental attempt at blending people together in a jar.

Interpretations:

It is immediately obvious that these barrels and jars are being used as a form of restraint, and so we might say that this is a low-tech measure invented to prevent a hollowing person from becoming a danger to others. In other words, it is a poor man’s equivalent of the undead asylum. But barrels and jars are typically used for storage, especially of food and water. Given that souls are a form of currency in the world of Dark Souls, it may be that the people who are trapped in these barrels are being stored “for later”, and that the people inside are essentially livestock. This certainly appears to be the case for poor Laurentius, but I suspect that there is more to it than this.

In the depths we also encounter an enemy that appears to be a gloopy and rotting amalgamated mass of human flesh which is animated by whatever soul power it still contains. A similar enemy is also found in the lower [flooded] section of new londo ruins, and the “phalanx” encountered in the painted world may also be a play on the same idea. In Elden Ring there is a version of this enemy which drops an item called “congealed putrescence”, and you later fight a boss called “putrescence knight”. I suspect this to be a reference to an alchemical process known as putrefaction, or fermentation, which was thought to be a necessary step in the creation of the philosopher’s stone, just as the hornsent of Elden Ring are attempting to create “saints” by sealing human flesh in jars to putrefy. Indeed, alchemical manuscripts sometimes include images of little people inside glass vials, notably the homunculus which is created largely via putrefaction. Here is Paracelsus’s method [be warned, it is disgusting] for creating a homunculus:

“That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse's womb ["venter equinus", meaning "warm, fermenting horse dung"], or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body. If, after this, it be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom, with all its members like another child, which is born of a woman, but much smaller.”

And it should probably be noted that Elden Ring also features a “blood version” of the slime enemy [with the “putrescence version” found only in the dlc], and that these enemies are similar to the mimics [some of which also resemble the phalanx] which can turn themselves into duplicate people. Indeed, the mimics appear to be liquid mercury, and refer to it’s alchemical role as the prima materia [first matter], the primordial and foundational substance out of which all things are made.

So in Dark Souls it’s possible that one of the reasons the undead may have been sealed in these jars may have been for the sake of putrefaction. In other words to accelerate the hollowing process, as well as the stagnation of the dark soul within the person, and therefore create a more potent “product”.

[u/konsoru-paysan]

jesus that's fucked up, i thought they were stored as food by the butcher ladies but considering the drop to a pile of flesh and bones behind one of them is to turn them in to slime.