ENTRY 23: NIGHTMARE APOSTLES

We talked about the Nightmare of Mensis, the weird place created by a bunch of academics when they tried to send their minds to another world, but we dove straight into the big scary brain. Mensis is actually where you'll find a chapel called Mergo's Loft, which is inhabited by a horde of giant "spiders!"

At least, they look like spiders, even if they do have twelve legs in various sizes, and they do produce webbing, though they don't possess any apparent venom or even fangs and attack strictly with their legs.

The head of a typical Apostle is especially odd; it doesn't look like the head of any known arachnid, but a black, finely wrinkled knob covered in stiff hairs, at the center of which is what can look from a distance like four tightly clustered black eyes, but up close, it seems to be a chitinous four-lobed orifice, perhaps a chewing mouth of some sort. These spiders therefore have no eyes, or at least, none that we can see, and there's an implication that they may be what's actually left of those human minds that successfully migrated to the Nightmare.

This is supported by there being some Apostles with the faces of human monks, though these appear as enemies only in the chalice dungeons. Are they more, or less evolved than the "pure" spider forms we see in Mensis?

It may be that the Apostles in Mensis are in their "correct" form, since another human-headed example can be encountered right in Vanilla Yharnam as a potentially friendly NPC. This is Patches, a character with a different incarnation in every Souls game, but usually isn't a rad, talking spider guy. His traditional role is a swindler who nearly gets the player killed, but will then become a merchant if you opt to spasre his life. How and why Patches became 90% Apostle is unknown, but while those in the Nightmare seem to be connected with the entity Mergo, Patches talks about Amygdala as his god, even "praying" that Amygdala have mercy on you.

Despite this, Patches doesn't seem to mind all that much when you kill Amy. He politely takes his leave, saying that his God is now "lost to him," and that he'll have to find another. If you press him further, he'll cryptically say "Oh, think not of poor Amygdala. Upon that piteous bastard, you bestowed salvation. Heh heh... All's well, that ends well... Heh heh heh..."

Why did he choose Amygdala as his god, but also considers the creature a "piteous bastard" that was given "salvation" in death? Our only clues are that Amygdala's files refer to it as a "false" god, and there's an implication it was one of several Great Ones stranded against its will. These are clues to what, you ask? Idunno! They sure are clues though, right? Clues to something! Does all this maybe also have to do with the fact that the Garden of Eyes look like Amygdala and carry spider-shaped artifacts? Oh, probably! Your guess is as good as mine!




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