Lore

Gravelord Nito, first of the Dead, is one of the four beings who found the Souls of Lords within the flame, and defeated the everlasting dragons. He acts as a god of death and disease, and is the master of the Gravelord Servant covenant.

After the war with the dragons, Nito presumably returned to the Tomb of the Giants, where he slumbers to this day as keeper of a Lord Soul.
Travelers brave enough to find their way into his tomb can pay their respects and become a Gravelord Servant.

At one point Pinwheel stole the power of Nito. This power was also sought after by Occultists who wished to destroy the other lords using the power of Nito. These events are considered ancient history that fall in a timeline between the fall of Oolacile and the Chosen Undead's arrival.

It is interesting to note Nito's role as the giver and bringer of death seems to put him in direct opposition to those who are undead.

Design Works Interview

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Miyazaki: We pursued two main avenues when designing Dark Souls: in the initial concept stages I gave each of the artists a few simple "image words" to use as a starting point and then they were free to develop these in whatever way they wished. We then took the images we liked, adjusted them where necessary and used them to begin shaping the world. For example the Gaping Dragon, Egg Carrier and Gravelord Nito all emerged during this stage and made it almost unchanged into the final game.

In cases where I had a clearer idea of what I wanted, the design process was slightly different. For example, this is going to be used in this place to perform this function or, the area is designed in this way so it must adhere to these conditions, for example the mimic and the gargoyles. Regardless of which design process was used, rather than to appoint a person to take charge of each concept, I took the designs and talked them over with each of the artists and developed them in that way.

Miyazaki: I remember all the trouble we went through naming [Nito]. Waragai thought my original name for the character was too sad. Dark Souls was his first job as an art designer and Nito was his first design so I felt I should respect his wishes. I changed the name slightly and I actually think the new name fits the character much better. Nito was originally created as the boss for the prototype map, and because of that, we tried out a huge range of different effects. There was constantly discussion about what colour he should be and how he should look.

Waragai: He was originally on fire, wasn't he?

Miyazaki: Yes, Nito is in the pre-rendered intro, but it's a really intricate design so it was extremely difficult to communicate what I wanted to the animators. The character had to be cloaked in shadow, shrouded in a deathly aura, but that's not easy to get across and their first attempt wasn't what I wanted at all.

Waragai: It can be difficult to explain how you want the material to behave to the animators can't it, the feel and the weight of something isn't easy to put into words.

Miyazaki: Yes, exactly. I had a good idea of how I want the materials to move in the pre-rendered scenes, but actually putting it in a way that was easy to understand was extremely difficult. No matter how many times you say "he's always surrounded by an aura" he would just come back covered in smoke. In the end I told them to make it more like cloth. Since he was selected to be in the intro we had a very difficult time with the character, but the fact that he was chosen shows how strong the initial design was.