Darkness. Despair. Madness. Below the Boreal Valley, past Irythill and beneath the Dark Manor, is Irythill Dungeon. Prisons such as this are meant to hold the guilty, either that or the innocent who defy the powerful. Who these unfortunate souls are is forever lost as this horrid place has stolen their names and their humanity.
The jailers who stalk the dungeon are as depraved as they are dangerous. Their lanterns will drain your life away, but won’t kill you. They simply want to weaken you, make you suffer, before they finish you off with their red hot soldering iron. And even if you survive that first scorching attack, the iron prevents you from healing, thus ensuring your torture endures for as long as possible.
To understand the jailers, one must understand the Profaned Capital, which lays further below. A conquered people, the citizens of the capital called upon Yhorm the Giant to be their protector. Yet, giants were despised and mistrusted—in fact the first prisoner of Irythill Dungeon was an unfortunate giant—and the people of the capital never truly accepted Yhorm. Still, Yhorm fought for the capital and an uneasy peace prevailed.
That is, until the day the handmaidens awakened a long slumbering curse and the Profaned Flame spread. The Profaned Flame, unlike the fire we are fighting to link, will never go out. It will always burn as it contains an abyssal darkness within it. Any who touch this flame are corrupted by it, for it draws out the worst within a person. Now those handmaidens who worship the Profaned Flame delight in the pain and suffering of others.
The jailers once dwelt in the capital, but escaped to serve Pontiff Sulyvahn. Yet a cruel master breeds cruel servants. It is unclear how depraved these jailers were before the Profaned Flame and Sulyvahn, but their giggles as they pursue their prey betrays what they have become. Perhaps their depravity is born from madness, which in turn is born from grief as it is said that the screams they draw from their victims help them forget their old lives and former home.
An eternity of imprisonment overseen by sadistic jailers is horrific enough, but Irythill Dungeon is worse still. Hidden within the cells is the Jailbreaker’s Key. Rumors of this key would offer the most exquisite torture: hope. For a prisoner might search for this key, dreaming of freedom and a sky full of stars. He may even find it, his hope erupting into joy. And yet, when we finds the door it opens and steps through, he will discover the truth: that this key is a cruel joke and leads only to the Profaned Capital, the accursed handmaidens, and a bottomless pit.
I have wondered why one must first traverse Irythill Dungeon to enter the Profaned Capital. Why create a place with the importance of the capital and force those who would seek it out to first travel through a dungeon? It occurred to me that perhaps the dungeon wasn’t meant to guard the entrance to the capital as much as it was meant to keep those in the capital from escaping.
Whatever it’s history, one thing is clear about Irythill Dungeon. To find yourself imprisoned within its walls is a fate almost beyond imagining, even for Dark Souls.