Blighttown, the festering, ramshackle slum buried deep within Lordran, is a place of misery and decay. Its precarious wooden walkways and crude structures seem haphazard, as if assembled in desperation rather than design. But there is a reason Blighttown is built only from rotting timbers and crude planks—one rooted in tragedy and the cruelty of the Age of Fire.
The Curse of Stone
Long before Blighttown fell into ruin, it was a colony of exiles, a refuge for the unwanted—cursed men, plague-ridden souls, and heretics condemned by Lordran’s rulers. These outcasts, denied the grace of Anor Londo and the sanctuaries of the gods, sought shelter in the toxic depths of the land. But they did not build their home from wood by choice.
It is said that the land itself rejected them. When the exiles first attempted to carve homes from stone, as men always had, they found their work undone. Blocks would crack and crumble overnight, no mortar would hold, and tools would snap as if rusted by centuries in mere moments. Some claimed it was the poison that seeped through the land, but others whispered darker rumors—that the Witch of Izalith’s failed Flame had left a wound upon the world, and the very bedrock of the land was cursed.
Desperate, the exiles turned to wood—scavenged from forgotten ruins, carried from distant lands, or torn from the roots of the swamp’s sickly trees. The wood fared no better, rotting swiftly in the noxious air, but at least it could be replaced. And so they built ever upward, stacking crude planks atop one another in a ceaseless battle against decay.
A Punishment from Above
Yet there are those who believe Blighttown’s wooden labyrinth was not merely the result of misfortune, but a deliberate punishment. It is said that the builders of the city were once slaves, bound to the mighty city of the gods. When Anor Londo no longer had use for them, they were cast down into the poisoned valley—left to fend for themselves with nothing but the splinters of the great trees that once lined the city’s gardens.
The ruling gods decreed that no stone from Lordran would aid them, and thus, Blighttown became what it is—a dying settlement of wood and filth, held together only by the will of the forsaken.
The Eternal Collapse
No matter the origin, the fate of Blighttown was sealed from the beginning. The wood rots, the walkways fall, and those who dwell there live in endless squalor, struggling against the swamp’s poison and the cruelty of their own kin. No matter how much they build, Blighttown will always be on the verge of collapse.
Perhaps that is the true curse—that no matter how much they toil, the exiles of Blighttown will never know permanence, only the slow, agonizing decay of a world that does not want them.
