The Paleblood Hunt - A Bloodborne Audiobook, read by Jay Britton

[Music] [Music] the pale blood [Music] hunt [Music] written by redgrave [Music] narrated by j britton [Music] [Applause] fear the old blood chapter one birgenworth cars and the vacuous spider everything begins at bergenworth an old institution of learning birgenworth was built in a peaceful secluded area away from the neighboring city and close to a great lake it is here that a group of individuals studied and explored the depths of human knowledge birgenworth is an old place of learning and the tomb of the gods carved out below yharnam should be familiar to every hunter well once a group of young bergenworth scholars discovered a holy medium deep within the tomb this led to the founding of the healing church and the establishment of blood healing in this sense everything sacred in yharnam can be traced back to birgenworth alfred vile blood hunter there were many students at birgenworth there were however certain individuals of note other than the students figures of importance who formed the inner circle so to speak while not all of them were scholars for the purpose of this analysis i refer to this group of individuals as the byrgenwerth scholars or the scholars for short those individuals who we can safely conclude were members of the scholars consisted of willem lawrence mikalash and carol master willem was the head of the academy and a highly respected figure all characters who refer to willem specifically refer to master willem indicating a deep respect for the figure even if they had differences in beliefs there is also a reference found on the roon workshop tool which refers to him as provost willem a provost is an administrator of an academic facility which supports placing willem as the head of the academy and its leading figure master willem's primary focus of study concerned the limits of human intelligence lawrence is a much more enigmatic figure especially for a character so important from the beast's skull in the grand cathedral the pc hunter witnesses a memory of an encounter between lawrence and willem in which willem accuses the younger lawrence of betraying him a note left on the cathedral staircase reads place your hand on the altar's sacred covering and inscribe master lawrence's adage upon your flesh that lawrence would be revered so highly infers that he must have been a very significant figure in the healing church it is well documented that the healing church has its roots in byrgenwerth college the byrgenwerth student uniform states the healing church has its roots in bergenworth and naturally borrows heavily from its uniform design the focus not on knowledge or thought but on pure pretension would surely bring master willem to despair if only he knew lawrence's title is that of the first vicar given to him both by the human skull of the nightmare and in his boss fight confirming this idea that lawrence was in fact one of the church's founders splitting from byrgenwerth in an event that we will later describe as the schism mikalash the boss encountered in the nightmare of mensis was another scholar as evidenced by the tattered bergenworth uniform he wears during the pc hunters fight against him nikolas also makes references to other parts of byrgenwerth which we will discuss later carol was a genius runesmith who through unknown methods could listen to the scratchings and utterings of the great ones while she could not understand the inhuman words they spoke she managed to etch them into visual symbols that could be identified the rune workshop tool describes carol as roonsmith carol student of byrgenwerth transcribe the inhuman utterings of the great ones into what are now called carol runes there are also two other individuals whom we can believe to have been a member of the scholars german and maria gammon was most assuredly an acquaintance of both lawrence and willem after the pc hunter defeats rom the vacuous spider they can find gammon whimpering in his sleep lawrence master willem somebody help me german is also as we know the first hunter he founded the workshop located in a hidden section of the upper cathedral ward and presumably worked with the church in its infancy judging from german's combat proficiency and master craftsmanship he may have been a bodyguard for tomb excavations a groundskeeper or a handyman for the college at large maria was gammon's greatest pupil and judging from the fact that she takes over the research hall of the healing church it's possible that she was a student at the college under lawrence regardless her participation in the events which would take place at the hamlet place her as a member of the bergenworth scholars prior to its schism we can now look at the scholars having explored each one individually as a collective unit willem lawrence mikalash gaiman maria and carol were individuals at the bergenworth college an institution dedicated to the furthering of knowledge and the exploration of the massive labyrinth built underground it was in this labyrinth that the scholars made the discovery that put every event in bloodborne into motion indeed the entire history of bloodborne can be traced to a single defining moment in which the scholars discovered something deep inside the ancient thumerian crypts the executioner alfred news is that once a group of young bergenworth scholars discovered a holy medium deep within the tomb this led to the founding of the healing church and the establishment of blood healing deep inside the labyrinth the scholars discovered the old blood it is unclear exactly what was found but in the upper level of the bergenworth mansion we can find the empty phantasm shell empty invertebrate shell that is said to be a familiar of a great one the healing church has discovered a great variety of invertebrates or phantasms as they are called whatever was found it was proof of the existence of the great ones it's possible that the scholars discovered de brutus the abandoned and left behind great one who would later commune with the healing church they certainly discovered a source of the old blood the tainted blood of the great ones whether it was zebritas or something else is unclear with the discovery of the old blood and of the great ones everything changed evolution became the goal push the limits of humanity and become something greater ascend to the level of the great ones push humanity into its next stage a scribbled note found in the nightmare lecture hall reads master willem was right evolution without courage will be the ruin of our race however it quickly became apparent that some of the scholars and lawrence in particular differed in their belief on how the evolution should be carried out carol's iron states eyes symbolize the truth master willem sought in his research disillusioned by the limits of human intellect master willem looked to beings from higher planes for guidance and sought to line his brain with eyes in order to elevate his thoughts however carol's metamorphosis rune states the discovery of blood made their dream of evolution a reality metamorphosis and the excess and deviation that followed was only the beginning there are two different resources that the player collects during their time in bloodborne blood echoes and insight the echoes is the method in which the pc hunter gains power while insight is the method in which the pc hunter gains knowledge while some at birgenworth believed that knowledge and understanding of the great ones and the higher planes of existence would lead to humanity's uplifting others believed that it was through the imbibing and fusing with the old blood that would lead to humanity's ascension this was a concept anathema to everything willem stood for fear the old blood these two fundamentally opposed philosophies would lead to the birgenworth schism but there is another piece of the puzzle upon entering the fishing hamlet in the hunter's nightmare the pc hunter is greeted by a fishkin muttering to himself if the player is wearing the milkweed rune the kin will give them the accursed brew a skull which states skull of a local from the violated fishing village the inside of the skull was forcibly searched for eyes as evidenced by innumerable scratches and indentations whatever happened in the fishing hamlet must have had to do with cause the great one found at the end of the area cars is apparently dead and while the hunter battles her orphan the great one is long since passed other than the mutterings of the fishkin there is only one other reference to cause that of mikalash in his commune with the cosmos ah coz or some say cosm do you hear our prayers as you once did for the vacuous rom grant us eyes grant us eyes rom as the pc encounters is a large creature who is found at the bottom of the moonside lake of byrgenwerth rom's title is that of the vacuous spider and is shown to be very relatively weak rom's only real strength comes from the spider kin she can spawn to defend herself other than that she is barely capable of defending herself either through carelessly hurling shards of energy or thrashing wildly at her enemy when the player encounters rom it is the defining moment in which the story of bloodborne goes from a narrative of hunting beasts to a sudden understanding that we the player have barely even scratched the surface of a much much darker truth but rom is not a fully developed great one mykolash in his communing with the cosmos mutters as you once did for the vacuous rom grant us eyes grant us eyes plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy rom was not always a great one eyes planted on her brain to cleanse her idiocy rom ascended to become one vacuous is defined in the oxford english dictionary as having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence mindless the word comes from the latin vacuous meaning empty along with the suffix us meaning by the nature of where does rom come from who is she what is her relation to the dead great one cause in birgenworth master willem and his students toiled away to excavate the thumerian labyrinth underground studying their gods and exploring the depths of human intellect the birgenworth scholars made two major breakthroughs in their study the first major discovery was the old blood specifically the blood of a great one it's possible that this great one was a british as in the bergenworth lecture hall we can discover the augur of abritas and we also find an empty phantasm shell in the upper chamber of the byrgenwerth mansion the second great discovery was cause when i first played the old hunters dlc my initial impression had been that it was the bergenworth scholars who had killed cause when i shared this theory many people pointed to the description of the cause parasite which states when the carcass of course washed up on the coast its insides were teeming with tiny parasites unlike any found in humans the argument was that this gave evidence to the fact that cause had actually been dead prior to the encounter with byrgenwerth having washed up on the coast of the fishing village i was unsure about my conclusion and couldn't decide which theory was more accurate until i played through the dlc a second time and encountered maria her words now that i had seen the entire picture made much more sense a corpse should be left well alone oh i know very well how the secrets beckons so sweetly when i first encountered maria i had naturally assumed she was talking about her own corpse now that i had seen what lay beyond her care everything fell into place as i wandered around the fishing hamlet taking a look at its design and features i came to a new conclusion look at how the kin of the hamlet throw their harpoons how the giants wield massive anchors how the wrecks of mighty vessels line the coast this isn't some quaint fishing village it's a wailing town prior to the release of the dlc many players had noted the strange mast sticking out of the water in the nightmare frontier we can now see the origin of these vessels the hamlet the villagers must have sighted the great one cars in the sea rising up and taking arms to kill what they must have perceived as a monster they hunted and killed her losing many of their whaling ships in the process but inevitably returning home victorious having sent the creature back to the sea but one day the corpse of the dead great one washed ashore when the villagers investigated the corpse they found it teeming with parasites which soon infected and took over the mines and bodies of the villagers transforming them into the kin that we encountered them as inevitably word reached bergenworth of the dead god on the hamlet they sent two individuals to investigate german the announcement trailer featured gammon with his scythe extended walking into the hamlet and we find rakuyo maria's weapon in the hamlet well german the first hunter traveled along with his greatest pupil maria to the hamlet and butchered the kin the skulls were split open in search of eyes and the first hunters carved a path towards the corpse of cause it is here that their greatest blasphemy was committed the elevator to the healing church research hall depicts three statues hovering over a child examining it the central figure is clearly a depiction of master willem featuring the same robes and hat as the provosts gammon and maria discovered that the dead cos had been pregnant the unborn fetus still intact a very important rule of bloodborne's world is that even if an individual dies in the waking world their consciousness may still remain in the dreamlands this is something that will come up time and time again and is evidenced by the existence of mikalash's corpse in the waking world the unborn murdered great one was brought back to the byrgenwerth college and dissected in the name of science what was retrieved was a cord of the eye the orphan's umbilical cord and it was then that master willem the greatest mind of byrgenwerth had an epiphany willem is quoted in the description of the great one's wisdom as having stated we are thinking on the basis of planes what we need are more eyes the eye is indeed the symbol representing not just insight in the player's heart but also the knowledge of the higher planes of existence and of the great ones discovery of the great ones and the old blood split the scholars into two opposing factions one i have dubbed the loyalists led by master willem the loyalists believed in evolution through eyes the accumulation of insight that would let humanity ascend this faction consisted of willem and his students the other faction which i have dubbed the radicals were led by lawrence the radicals believed in evolution through blood the accumulation of power that would let humanity ascend this faction consisted of lawrence mikulash gaiman and maria while there was never any violence between these two groups the fundamental difference in philosophy led them to inevitably separating to go their own paths while the loyalists remained at byrgenwerth the radicals founded the healing church in the pursuit of further spreading their knowledge of the old blood this schism was not also purely among the scholars but also amongst the student populous with many leaving along with the radicals with the healing church founding and flourishing willem and the remaining loyalists were no doubt concerned with the growing power and the threat they posed the loyalists were fully aware that the actions of the healing church in their use of the old blood would lead to the spread of the scourge while the healing church spread throughout yharnam willem and the remaining loyalists got to work on their own research this is where things get fuzzy as there is very little information available on this crucial point in time what we can see however are the results of the loyalists research if the pc hunter encounters yosefka or rather the impostor yosefka after the blood moon has risen killing her will make her drop a cord of the eye which states provost willem sought the cord in order to elevate his being and thoughts to those of a great one by lining his brain with eyes the only choice he knew if man would ever match their greatness when the pc hunter first enters the byrgenwerth mansion they encounter on the second floor an npc hunter named yuri who appears to be a member of the choir the highest ranking members of the healing church yuri wields a call beyond the choir's ultimate weapon and wears the blindfold cap and the attire of a choir member this would show that the choir returned to the ruins of byrgenwerth from time to time in order to gather old research notes or artifacts that the impostor yosefka who wields a weapon of the choir an orga of ebretus would be in possession of an artifact that once belonged to master willem can be explained as such the choir recovered this chord the umbilical cord of the orphan of course willem had used the cord in order to further his research delving deeper and deeper into the depths of human understanding during this point in time with intense research into the great ones being conducted at birgenworth the students were twisted and transformed into gardens of eyes for willem's research bizarre kin of the cosmos who would wander the grounds only four individuals were left intact willem doris the grave guard the unnamed doorman who would be entrusted with the password and rom whatever happened to carol is unclear she may have left with lawrence she may have been transformed along with the student body or she may have left bergenworth at an unspecified time to continue her research separately however thanks to carol's transcriptions of the inhuman utterings of the great ones the loyalists learned of the importance and the power held by great bodies of water if we take a look at any of the lake or sea runes we can find the description great volumes of water serve as a bull walk guarding sleep and an auger of the eldritch truth overcome this hindrance and seek what is yours this even matches the game mechanics in which runes representing water provide defense and resistance the grand lake of mud hidden now from sight mikalash master willem's last great ritual ascended rom into that of a newly formed great one placed at the bottom of the moonside lake rom's empty mind served as a shield for our physical plane protected by the great body of water it prevented the beckoning of the moon presence by lawrence's healing church with his knowledge and understanding of the great ones willem was able to use the orphan's cord to rebirth a new great one and line her brain with eyes using her as a living bull walk to seal away the great ones the nightmare and the blood moon but where did she come from we have already determined what the word vacuous means empty mindless this can very easily be attributed to a simpleton or to a brain-dead being rom however certainly does not seem to be brain dead while she is weak she most certainly attempts to defend herself in the meager ways she has in the interview with miyazaki found in the official guide miyazaki was asked what his favorite boss was his answer was wrong but that in itself while interesting was not very striking however the specifics of his response were unexpected i really like her there are some oddly cute aspects to her moves and modeling there is another type of being that is blank empty as john locke writes human beings are born tabula rasa a blank slate empty beings that are given shape by our experiences a being that can be described as being cute weak helpless and empty of thoughts lacking of experience an infant for miyazaki's interview in the world of bloodborne babies that are treated as special in one way or the other offered as lures to the great ones the great ones have all lost their children because of their positions and as a result they're attracted to these special babies the babies are one way of calling them the hunter can find a note in yara ghoul left by a dead hunter which reads nightmarish rituals crave a newborn find one and silence its harrowing cry the first instinct of the player is to associate this with the school of mensis they must be using some child to perform a ritual but mikolash and his students are only following in the footsteps of master willem trying to reproduce the success of the loyalists at birgenworth as you once did for the vacuous rom grant us eyes grant us eyes plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy rom is not a great one in fact bloodborne causes understandable confusion in that it refers to many different species factions and groups as belonging to the singular group the great ones but the kin ascended mortals who bleed a clear serum are not fully fledged complete and whole great ones like the moon presence the wet nurse or the orphan they are merely kin of the cosmos killing rom does not drop a great one cold blood killing rom drops akin cold blood rom daughter of willem either literally or metaphorically born from the fruits of his research and used to ascend look at the way she moves desperately backing away from the hunter she seems almost infantile unlike the rest of the kin that are encountered rom has no natural defense mechanisms other than her ability to manipulate energy if you ask me she doesn't look like a spider at all she looks like a caterpillar the infant form of a butterfly one that may have become [Music] beautiful chapter 2 the healing church lady maria yasefka and ebritus if it's blood you're interested in you should try the healing church the church controls all knowledge on blood ministration and all varieties of blood across the valley to the east of yharnam lies the town of the healing church known as the cathedral ward and deep within cathedral ward is the old grand cathedral the birthplace of the healing church's special blood or so they say yharnamites don't share much with outsiders normally they wouldn't let you near the place but the hunt is on tonight this might be your chance gilbert it's the first concrete objective the pc hunter can make for themselves get to the healing church and look for answers the healing church is the institution that while it doesn't technically rule over yharnam serves as the city's anchor and structure it is from the healing church that the art of blood ministration the art that jarnam would become famous for was first brought with the use of the healing church's special blood they were able to cure any disease forming a religion devoted to the worship of gods and blood when tales of the curative properties of yharnam blood spread those suffering from incurable diseases often travel to yanum in order to seek out their last chance at salvation the pc hunter was one such individual according to promotional information leading up to the release of bloodborne in search of blood that can cure any disease the pc travels to yanum but what is the healing church where does it come from and most importantly what is the secret behind their special blood the first sane member of the healing church the pc hunter encounters is alfred the executioner from alfred the hunter learns more about the roots of the healing church the healing church is the fountainhead of blood healing well i'm a simple hunter quite unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the institution but i have heard that the holy medium of blood healing is venerated in the main cathedral and that counsellors of the old church reside in the high stratum of the cathedral ward the tomb of the gods carved out below yharnam should be familiar to every hunter well once a group of young byrgenwerth scholars discovered a holy medium deep within the tomb this led to the founding of the healing church and the establishment of blood healing the short story is that a group of scholars in byrgenwerth discovered blood of incredible power in the tombs underneath specifically they discovered old blood the old blood and knowledge of the great ones that existed led to a revolution in the college's theories and experiments but master willem head of byrgenwerth college disagreed with the idea of using the old blood of the great ones to advance humanity fear the old blood master willem to lawrence this led to the byrgenwerth schism in which a group of scholars led by lawrence left bergenworth and founded the healing church there are four individuals whom we know were founders of the church though there may very well have been unnamed others lawrence german mikolash and maria lawrence became the first vicar founding a new religion and promising a cure to any disease through the use of his miraculous blood ministration a note found in the grand cathedral reads to the ritual of blood purveyor of ministration place your hand on the altar's sacred covering and inscribe master lawrence's adage upon your flesh lauren and his blood ministration brought a new era into janam a culture of blood worship spreading through the population but with the tainted blood of the great ones flowing through human veins the scourge of the beast came to janam those who had been ministered by the old blood were susceptible to coming under the effects of the scourge in response to this german one of the men who had sided with lawrence in the byrgenwerth schism founded the workshop located in a hidden area of the upper cathedral ward the workshop was a place of training of elite warriors dispatched by the church to hunt the beasts and prevent panic from spreading through the population the hunter attire reads one of the standard articles of hunter attire fashioned at the workshop a fine piece of hunter attire that provides stable defense to anyone facing yharnam's beastly threat allows one to stalk beasts unannounced by cover of night the last sentence is the most important allows one to stalk beasts unannounced by cover of night originally the workshop was likely a secret institution the hunters wore no symbols and had no uniform save for the sawhunter badge which each kept in order to identify one another badge crafted long ago with the workshop attests to one's prowess as a hunter of beasts the workshop is gone and no group recognizes this meaningless badge they operated in the cover of darkness disposing of yanamites who had succumbed to the scourge of the beast likely is more of a cover-up than anything anything to prevent the public becoming aware that the blood they were being administered was turning them into monsters but what of maria according to maria's hunting attire among the first hunters all students of gammon was the lady hunter maria maria is distantly related to the undead queen but had great admiration for german unaware of his curious mania born in cainhurst maria was a beautiful woman no doubt even by kane her standards while she was a relative of the queen to the aristocratic nobles of cainhurst this likely meant very little no doubt every noble was dying to tell everyone they knew about how they were anneliese's 12th cousin seventh removed and so the relation probably didn't mean much unlike the rest of her people however maria disliked the use of blood weaponry as stated by the rakuyo this sword feeds not off blood but instead demands great dexterity lady maria was fond of this aspect of the rakuyo as she frowned upon blood blades despite being a distant relative of the queen however after the events that took place at the fishing hamlet maria could no longer bear to wield a weapon as she and german retrieved the orphan for byrgenwerth maria threw rakuyo into the hamlet's well one day she abandoned her beloved rakuyo casting it into a dark well when she could stomach it no longer we as players first hear of lady maria from the patience in the nightmare research hall they call out to her and speak of her with genuine admiration and even love they ask her to hold their hand or to help them to care for them key to the balcony on the first floor of the research hall lady maria of the astral clock tower gave this to the patient adeline maria had hoped adeline would find comfort in the faint breeze that carried the scent of flowers from the outside but adeline couldn't fathom her intentions it seems that maria genuinely cared for the patience of the church's experiments and she went out of her way to try and make adeline more comfortable in her suffering while the experiments themselves were gruesome there's no evidence that there was any malicious intent towards the patients themselves though it might be their madness the patients all seem to be there willingly even apologizing for having been failures in the experimentation but eventually maria died her passing marks the end of an era the beginning of the transition from the old church and the old hunters into the new ones the ones that we find ourselves engaging in the present but how did maria die when we meet her she is noticeably dead at least as dead as a consciousness can be the evidence seems to point towards a slit throat as the blood on her blouse has traveled down from her neck in addition during her boss fight she visibly stabs herself in the throat in order to initiate the second phase of the battle this seems to point towards maria's death as an act of suicide slitting her own throat but let us pause for a moment to remember the individual other than gaiman and maria who left with lawrence mikalash there is very little information on mikalash and on the school of mensis which was no doubt founded to continue the work at byrgenwerth mikalash founded his institution in a city hidden by the church yara ghoul from here mikulash could research in secret while supposedly reporting to lawrence the upper cathedral ward key states the upper echelons of the healing church are formed by the school of mensis based in the unseen village and the choir occupying the upper cathedral ward the school of mensis was likely their first as its research more closely resembles birgenworth and its practice of researching in secrecy matches the healing church's early strategy of working for the most part behind the scenes everything changed with old yharnam ashen blood was a horrible epidemic that spread like wildfire naturally in order to cure the disease blood ministration was used in excess on each and every one of the victims this would lead to the scourge as referenced by the antidote tablets small medicinal tablets that counteract poison used to treat ashen blood the baffling sickness that ravaged old yharnam long ago these tablets only provide short-term relief the ash and blood ailment eventually triggered the spread of the beastly scourge after old janum the scourge could no longer be kept a secret the workshop was disbanded and replaced with a new group that would become the healing church hunters led by the hunter ludwig the workshop was no longer necessary and was sealed away it is likely at this time that the healing church took more control over yharnam the church effectively acting as the governing body of the city with the church firmly seated in power as the saviors who had brought blood ministration to yharnam the choir was formed in the upper reaches of the city by now the healing church was run not by lawrence and gaiman but by the generation who came after them the choir ruled over the church while ludwig's hunters formed the new ranks of the church's police force the school of menses remained but likely grew further and further apart from the church over time likely dissatisfied with the progress of research that had been made since the church split from byrgenwerth the choir began to research the blood of the great ones the choir garb states members of the choir are both the highest ranking clerics of the healing church and scholars who continue the work that began at birgenworth it is uncertain exactly how much of the church's religion was merely used as a figurehead it's not clear if the choir truly believed that the great ones were gods or if they simply used that as a way to legitimize their research they certainly acknowledged that the great ones if not gods were certainly god-like the level of detail devoted to the sacred symbols and carvings in the church can only display a veneration of the great ones as superior beings specifically the formless great one odin to get a closer look at the choirs motivations and research let's take a moment to analyze dr yosefka a character whom the pc under encounters very early on in the story bloodborne begins with the pc hunter awakening in the first floor of dr yosefka's clinic after receiving their very first blood administration yosefka is the very first npc that the hunter can encounter in bloodborne after the hunter dies to the wolf beast and is sent to the hunter's dream returning with weaponry marking them a hunter if the player travels back up the stairs towards the clinic they will encounter the door locked and barred through a crack in the door we see a woman dressed in white with whom we can speak are you out on the hunt then i'm very sorry but i cannot open this door i am yosefka the patients here in my clinic must not be exposed to infection i know that you hunt for us for our town but i'm sorry please this is all that i can do yosefka will assist the hunter by providing them with her specially concentrated blood capable of fully healing the hunter the product of a slow and careful refinement process this rare blood vial appears to be a clinic original the hunter can return to yosefka at any time to collect more blood but can only carry a single vial at a time this changes however after the death of father gascoigne this time when the hunter comes to yosefka there will be no blood provided instead the doctor will ask the hunter to direct any individuals they come across to her clinic so that they can be treated and cured from this point onwards the doctor speaks with a slightly deeper tone of voice and in fact is voiced by a completely different person while yosefka's voice actor is credited as being jenny funnel there is a second credit to an imposter doctor credited to an actor named lucy briggs owen from this point onwards yosefka will ask the hunter to bring her more and more people assuring that they are being taken proper care of as a reward for the hunter if the hunter begins to bring her people she will eventually start providing the player with blue elixirs blue elixir is described as a dubious liquid medicine used in strange experiments conducted by high ministers of the healing church a rather chilling item indeed for a common blood administration doctor to be carrying but it isn't unless the hunter finds the back entrance to the clinic accessible by climbing up an adjacent building connected to the forbidden woods that the truth of yosefka's research can be discovered any npcs that the hunter sent in the past to yosefica's clinic will be found transformed and twisted into celestials blue skinned kin of the cosmos if the hunter sent nobody to the clinic they will only find a single celestial located in the sick room upon its death it drops one of yosefka's blood vials possibly one that was being saved for the hunter upon the player's return these are presumably the remains of the true yosefka whom the player meets at the beginning of the game as the hunter travels upstairs towards the top of the clinic one of two events will take place if the hunter goes to the top of the clinic before the blood moon has risen the imposter yosefka will attack the hunter she wields a threaded cane and a repeating pistol and if her health is low enough we'll even attack the hunter with a call beyond the ultimate weapon of the healing church one of the secret rites of the choir long ago the healing church used phantasms to reach a lofty plane of darkness but failed to make contact with the outer reaches of the cosmos the right failed to achieve its intended purpose but instead created a small exploding star now a powerful part of the choir's arsenal at times failure is the mother of invention the false yosefka is one of four npcs who wield a call beyond the other three being mikolash the forgotten madman and yuri the choir member found in the bergenworth mansion we can infer from this revelation that the false yosefka is a member of the choir relocating from the upper cathedral ward to yosefka's clinic in order to continue her research possibly because of the fact that due to the spread of the scourge of beasts the cathedral ward is no longer a safe place to operate upon killing the false yosefka she will drop a powerful odin writhe rune interestingly enough the hunter can locate a weaker version of the odin wrythe rune by killing adela the nun or by looting it off of the celestial she becomes if the hunter sent her to yosefka's clinic this connection only reinforces the false yosefka's affiliation with the church and that she held a rank of higher importance than a nun but this is only one of two possible events that can occur in yosefka's clinic if the hunter goes to the top of the clinic after the blood moon has risen they will find her on all fours perched on one of the operating tables god i'm nauseous have you felt this it's progressing i can see things i knew it i'm different i'm no beast i oh god it feels awful but it proof that i'm chosen don't you see how they rise rise inside my head it's rather rapturous uh with enough time to conclude her research yosefka has begun her ascension killing her can drop what i believe is the orphans umbilical cord which was recovered by the choir but what was this research what did the choir do how did they do it this brings us to the final topic of our current analysis ibritus daughter of the cosmos ibritas is found in the depths of the orphanage described as key to the orphanage birthplace of the choir the orphanage shadowed by the grand cathedral was a place of scholarship and experimentation where young orphans became potent unseen thinkers for the healing church the choir that would later split the healing church was a creation of the orphanage we have established previously that it was originally the school of mensis which performed research for the church in the secrecy of yara ghoul however with the growth of the church's power after the cleansing of old yharnam there was no longer a need for secrecy and a new effort was put forward into spreading the old blood it would be the choir who would fulfill this need with the orphanage as their laboratory note that the orphanage is located directly behind the grand cathedral we can recall gilbert mentioning that and deep within cathedral ward is the old grand cathedral the birthplace of the healing church's special blood but the cathedral is not the source of the blood while it is provided to the public from the grand cathedral it actually originates in the orphanage from ebritus and the celestials ibritus is the left behind great one whatever that means and communed and worked with the healing church in their research we find multiple references to this one of the secret rites of the choir high-ranking members of the healing church use phantasms the invertebrates known to be augurs of the great ones to partially summon abandoned ebritus one of the few rites that allow one to directly utilize the power of the great ones and evidence that the choir had approached the eldritch truth olga of a bretus great chalices unlock deeper reaches of the labyrinth the great is chalice became the cornerstone of the choir the elite delegation of the healing church it was also the first great chalice brought back to the surface since the time of byrgenwerth and allowed the choir to have audience with the bretus great is chalice but who is ibritus what is her purpose what research did she allow the healing church to perform and what relation does she have to the great ones and the old blood the healing church operated in secrecy in its formative days mikolash slowly continued his own research into the old blood through kidnappings and experimentation lawrence administered the old blood to the ill and those who succumbed to the scourge of the beast were eliminated under cover of darkness by gammon's hunters while all this was going on the church quietly continued their research into the great ones independent from byrgenwerth initially the only great one that the healing church had identified had been cause the great one from the depths of the ocean the church's experiments into the great ones therefore revolved around water as described by the brain fluid in the early days of the healing church the great ones were linked to the ocean and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water and listen for the howl of the sea brain fluid writhed inside the head the initial makings of internal eyes it was a fruitless pursuit however for as far as we know the great ones do not originate from the sea but from the dreamlands and the cosmos as such the experiments were failures overseeing the research from the astral clock tower was lady maria after the hamlet massacre maria refused to hunt again instead she began to run research towards the great ones for the budding healing church but her thoughts could never leave the blasphemous nature of what she and gammon had done at the hamlet how the orphan had been ripped from its mother's womb nor would she be allowed to forget atonement for the riches by the wrath of mother cause not all of the hamlet had been destroyed the parasites that inhabited their mother cause had managed to infest the villagers transforming them into ascended kin of the cosmos german was the first hunter and maria his greatest pupil in this sense they can be seen as the father and mother of all hunters anyone who calls themselves a hunter no matter which organization they associate themselves with is a descendant in some way from german and maria who murdered the orphan of cause lay the curse of blood upon them and their children and their children's children forevermore perhaps maria was haunted by unending nightmares of what she had done perhaps in her frustration she desperately continued her experiments surely something had to come out of the atrocities she had committed but each and every one of her experiments was another failure another dead end the patients began to notice her frustration with them sobbingly apologizing for their failures begging her for forgiveness maybe over time she became less and less compassionate with the patients and more and more racked with guilt on one hand her desire to uncover the truth behind cause and the great ones could not be stopped but on the other hand she cared for the patients of the research hall and did not want to see them suffer she could see only one way out oh i know very well how the secrets beckon so sweetly only an honest death will cure you now liberate you from your wild curiosity lady maria of the astral clock tower and so she ended her own life her death marked the end of an era by this point mikalash and the school of mensis had already begun to draw further and further away from the rest of the healing church with her death gehrman spiraled into depression and the elite workshop was sealed away and abandoned the old secretive quiet healing church had begun to die and may have fallen apart completely were it not for the events of old yanum the church had always relied on gaining new followers through the use of their miraculous disease curing blood and old yharnam gave them the perfect opportunity to display their religion to the masses after old yharnam's cleansing the healing church exploded in power and fame they could no longer operate in secrecy and needed a much more significant source of the blood the great is chalice became the cornerstone of the choir the elite delegation of the healing church it was also the first great chalice brought back to the surface since the time of byrgenwerth and allowed the choir to have audience with the bretus and so the choir was born an elite delegation of old scholars and clerics the choir would become the new ipso facto leaders of the healing church the choir plunged into the tomb deeper than anyone had gone since the days of byrgenwerth looking for a greater source of blood and a way in which to bring their research to the next level they traveled to the ruins of the thumerian city of is which had not been entered since the time of the byrgenwerth scholars they went to meet with a british daughter of the cosmos the great is chalice was relocated to the orphanage located behind the grand cathedral and would serve as the main laboratory for the choir interestingly we see many many carriages throughout our time in yharnam many players will recall seeing or leaving notes in front of them with charming or amusing words such as despicable infant but where are all the babies we encounter no child-sized coffins in the streets of yharnam but many many many carriages where we do find child-sized coffins is in the upper cathedral ward in the orphanage the choir communed with the bretus and used their new knowledge to experiment on the babies that were either abandoned or sent to the orphanage it is even possible that after the widespread epidemic of the scourge the choir went through the public and gathered all babies and children of janam under the pretense of protecting them until the hunt was over janamites would have no reason not to trust the church and were likely delighted that their governing body had such a concern for the welfare of their children in the lumen flower gardens we can see the results of their experiments look at the way the celestials seem to grow from the ground even the name garden seems to suggest an almost sickening way in which the celestials were harvested from the ground like a crop this was the source of yharnam's special blood the children who were elevated to becoming celestials were then harvested and used as sources of blood for the church a renewable resource that would allow them to provide the entire city with as much blood as it needed the false yosefka was one such researcher who fled to the clinic after the upper cathedral ward was lost to the scourge the presence of scourge beasts in the upper cathedral ward only proves that the scourge was too much for even the choir to handle and that the researchers likely fled one researcher fled to bergenworth the first member of the choir that the pc hunter encounters the choir member yuri is seen wandering the second floor of byrgenwerth mansion she even wears a blindfold cap reminding us that members of the choir are both the highest ranking clerics of the healing church and scholars who continue the work that began at birgenworth the eye covering indicates their debt to the teachings of master willem even though their paths diverged the choir had an enormous respect for master willem even though they split away from him there was never any violence between the two factions in bergenworth only a difference in philosophy that led to an inevitable separation it is no wonder that the choir never disposed of master willem they truly saw him as a highly respected figure in their history in fact master willem had achieved what the choir so desperately yearned for he had ascended to the level of the gods in the beginning days of bloodborne's release all anyone could talk about in regards to law was yosefka who is she is she an imposter when do they switch which is the real one so much focus was placed on the false yosefka that the real one got swept away people were so engrossed with the revelation that yosefka was replaced with an imposter that they stopped looking at the original who was yosefka like the imposter she wears the white church garb which tells us these doctors are superiors to the black preventative hunters and specialists in experimentally backed blood ministration and the scourge of the beast they believe that medicine is not a means of treatment but rather a method for research and that some knowledge can only be obtained by exposing oneself to sickness this implies that josefka was a high-ranking member of the church and a specialist on experimental blood now look at the back of your sefka's clinic bodies have been dumped into pits vials upon vials upon vials of blood have been collected hundreds of research notes have been written there are also celestials in the forbidden woods who appear to have wandered off from the clinic how could this be the work of the false yosefka when the original yosefka doesn't get replaced until the death of father gascoigne furthermore how was she replaced in the first place there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it is possible to copy someone's face there's only one type of woman that has the same face as another a sister in the back of yosefka's clinic we find a half-transformed celestial dead on an operating table yosefka isn't some innocent doctor she's the one who invented the process in the first place this explains why one of yosefka's blood vials can be found in the nightmare of mensis as the school of mensis and the choir shared their research it's possible that yosefka's blood vial is itself the key to celestial transformation a clinic original who knows what might have happened had we consumed enough of it when the false yosefka fled to the clinic she brought with her an artifact that the choir had previously recovered from byrgenwerth the orphan's cord of the eye the false yosefka sought to ascend just as master willem had by lining her brain with eyes in the manner he had done so many years ago how they rise rise inside my head it's rather rapturous she isn't pregnant at all but instead has run out of time to continue her experimentation in her last ditch effort she imbibes willem's cord but it doesn't work as evidenced by the fact that she bleeds a dark red seek pale blood to transcend the hunt the first note that the player receives many many players have noticed that there are certain enemies which bleed not red but a clear and almost pale colored blood however this is not the specific pale blood if this was indeed the blood of the great ones there would be a few figures whom we would believe to bleed pale but in fact bleed a dark red themselves amygdala the orphan the wet nurse and the moon presence there are however certain figures which bleed what i call serum celestials brain suckers master willem rom and ebritus rom an ascended mortal does bleed red if the hunter attacks her stomach as do her spider-kin but if the hunter attacks the eyes and heads of rom or her progeny they bleed the serum of the kin serum is not blood of the great ones but rather blood of the kin of the cosmos those who were once mortal but ascended to becoming kin of the great ones notice how ebritus is mentioned as being the daughter of the cosmos but this doesn't follow as every great one loses its child instead the great ones yearn for surrogates ebritus was possibly thumerian as she is found by the scholars in a thumerian city it is well documented that the thumerian's research and experimentation with the old blood led to their ascension as they neared the eldritch truth however they were struck down before they could truly ascend to being great ones the scourge of beasts spread throughout the people the blood moon rose the great ones descended and a womb was left with child jarnam's pregnancy with mergo was a failure and so in search of a surrogate ibritas possibly a researcher of thumeru ascended to the level of the great ones it is so very interesting to me how ebritus is repeatedly referred to as having been left behind ibritas is not a true great one instead she was ascended to becoming kin just as willem did the thumerians are ancient who knows how long it took for her to develop into her current form perhaps in a thousand years master willem will look much like her as well she was abandoned as the great ones left after the devastation of thumeru and so she waited in the labyrinth caring for the phantasms small slug-like creatures which were named as being familiars of the great ones and when the scholars stumbled upon her in is she would finally have an outlet with which to commune with the outside world willem and the scholars met with the bretus and through her they began their research of the old blood the tainted blood of ebretus surrogate child of the cosmos it was through ibrita's tainted blood that the tragedy which struck thumeru would be doomed to repeat itself in the city of yanum ebritus seems to get her name from the ibritas butterfly a species of butterfly found in south america which matches the although admittedly distorted form vibritas is having an almost butterfly-like appearance when we meet her she is found in front of a corpse a corpse of a vacuous spider remember that even though something may die in the waking world its consciousness can continue to survive in the dreamlands ebritus had lost her daughter rom it's a tragedy really every great one loses its child but there were many surrogates to be found in the baby carriages of yanum chapter three jura the powder kegs ashen blood and [Music] abandoned by men is now home only to beasts they are of no harm to those above turn back by the hunter will face the hunt juror retired hunter the pc hunter encounters jura for the first time upon entering old yanum in which jarrah warns the hunter to leave when the pc hunter fails to comply he is none too pleased and becomes aggressive in his defense of old yharnam but to really discover who jura is let's first take a look at the history of the heretics of the workshop the powder kegs the powder kegs were and i use the term were intentionally a group of hunters with a flare for the dramatic and a love of complexity intricacy and explosiveness in their designs they deviated from the hunting style of simplicity in design developed by gammon the first hunter and preferred ambitious or excessive depending on your point of view weapon design influenced by a love of flame and a desire to crush and burn they developed their main weapon of choice the boom hammer which is described as a trick weapon used by the old hunters and crafted by the workshop heretics the powder kegs a giant hammer equipped with a miniature furnace when ignited and fired it emits a volley of flame that explodes furiously upon impact crush the beasts then burned them the brute simplicity of the boom hammer was favored by hunters with an acute distaste for beasts another slightly rarer powder cake weapon developed was the stake driver jura's personal weapon of choice the stake driver is described as a trick weapon fashioned by the workshop heretics the powder kegs the stake driver allows for high damage critical attacks but is difficult to use and leaves its wielder wide open but none of this should bother a mere powder keg these two new trick weapons among others like the rifle spear and whirly gig saw were drastically different from the previous designs of the hunters workshop however the powder kegs didn't settle with trick weapons even trying to implement bigger and stronger firepower into their arsenal with the cannon and gatling gun we can also give the powder kegs credit for the design of the rope molotov cocktails seeing as gaining the powder keg badge unlocks them at the bath messenger at some point in time the powder kegs were labeled heretics and exiled from the workshop presumably the powder kegs are no more as all references to them are in the past tense and even their badge description refers to them as the late powder kegs they were very likely disbanded or slain quite a long time ago seeing as nobody seems to reference them their association with the workshop only lends credence to the idea of the powder kegs being a relatively old faction as the workshop itself is no longer a relevant institution as evidenced by the saw hunter badge the workshop is gone and no group recognizes this meaningless badge except the messengers in the bath who understand its profundity the only remaining trace of powder kegs is found in the retired hunter jura so who is stura his official description reads an old veteran hunter who is said to possess amazing skill no one has seen him in many years and he looks like he's been on his own for some time we learn more from the description of the grey wolf cap which states it as a tire of the retired hunter juror this worn wolf cap was his trademark jura is known through his contact with the powder kegs the heretics of the workshop he is said to have been both uncommonly kind and dreadfully foolish jira felt defeated by the state of old yharnam and renounced his hunter's fouls uncommonly kind is certainly right jura is unique amongst any character in bloodborne as showing sympathy towards those affected by the scourge of the beast the things you hunt they're not beasts their people it's also interesting to note that his cap refers to him as having contact with the powder kegs rather than being a member it's possible the juror knew of the powder kegs or made friends with them that he carries a powder keg badge indicates that at the very least he was some kind of honorary member he most assuredly traveled alongside the powder kegs as the description of the gatling gun states the juror had three companions the youngest of whom used the gatling gun but jura's absolute most important quality is that he like the pc hunter was once a part of the hunter's stream i no longer dream but i was once a hunter too you have the whole night to dream make the best of it he also knows full well that killing the pc hunter will do nothing but stall them if the pc dies to jira he remarks i should think you still have dreams well the next time you dream give some thought to the hunt i do not believe every hunter is special like the pc and juror there would be much more information and general knowledge about the hunter's dream if this were the case certain hunters are special chosen by german and attached to the hunter's dream the title i have given these special hunters is a pale blood hunter the doll herself admits that the pc was not the first over time countless hunters have visited this stream the graves here stand in their memory it all seems so long ago now jura was at one point a pale blood hunter like the pc hunter who retired from hunting and renounced his vows to live in solitude this brings us to old janam while old janam is an optional location in the game the pc hunter is guided towards it by german in order to acquire the holy chalice historically old janam was the location of a terrible disease known as ashen blood antidote tablets are described as small medicinal tablets that counteract poison used to treat ashen blood the baffling sickness that ravaged old yanum long ago these tablets only provide short-term relief the tablets were used as to give temporary relief to the victims of the disease while they were being treated by the then newly formed healing church what would bring true relief would be the bringing of blood ministration the medical procedure that would become the cornerstone of yharnam with the ability to cure any disease the healing church's blood ministration got to work immediately however as the antidote notes the ashen blood ailment eventually triggered the spread of the beastly scourge with blood ministration came the scourge of the beast as the old blood used in the ministration would spread the scourge one disease had been contained but the treatment gave birth to another just as it had in ailing loran there are trace remains of medical procedures in parts of ailing loran whether these were attempts to control the scourge of the beast or the cause of the outbreak is unknown with the scourge of the beast too much to handle a hunt was called now we have jura the powder kegs and old janam three pieces of a puzzle but it's not unless the pc stumbles into a hidden building in old janam that the pieces connect near jura's tower is a hidden building that can be accessed by dropping a far far distance down a ledge inside this building everything comes together here the pc hunter finds two corpses one of them holds a rifle spear the other wears a set of charred hunter gear next to them is a hunter's note the red moon hangs low and beasts ruled the streets are we left no other choice than to burn it all to cinders after maria's death and gammon's self-inflicted retirement the healing church lost a significant portion of its strength the school of mensis began to drift apart from the healing church and it seemed as if things were spiraling downwards as the healing church continued its operations and explorations of the thumerian labyrinth they discovered a swamp in the forbidden woods located directly behind one of their clinics the swamp was deathly poisonous and filled with strange parasitic leeches the poison likely came up from the hinter tombs in the labyrinth where we can see very similar swamps we also find in this swamp what appears to be lumbering giants much like the ones that the healing church would later employ as their enforcers it's possible that the poison itself mutated those who lived into these beings either way the healing church discovered these parasites that secreted a poisonous substance in the forbidden woods we also find the white church garb which reminds us that the church believes that medicine is not a means of treatment but rather a message for research and some knowledge can only be obtained by exposing oneself to sickness and so did the church develop the ashen blood from the parasitic leeches and loose it upon old yharnam as old yanam began to grow sick with ash and blood lawrence and the church arrived with the old blood promising a cure to all diseases they were hailed as saviors as they began to administer their miraculous special blood to the people of yharnam swelling in power and position but as the antidote reminds us with ash and blood came the scourge as those who had been treated with communion fell victim to the scourge becoming beasts with german gone and his old hunters disbanded the church had a need for a new workshop to deal with the victims of the ashen blood the otto workshop was formed and hunters were recruited on mass to deal with the rising issue of the scourge of the beasts these hunters unlike the silent warriors of germans slaughtered the beasts furiously the old hunter garb worn by the otto hunters tells us that in this era hunters were ten a penny indicating the during the time of the ashen blood plague it was likely not at all unusual for citizens to witness groups of hunters walking the streets in search of those who may have fallen to the scourge it was likely a time of great fear for the people of janam not knowing who would be the next to turn who would die of the plague or who would simply be swept up in the bloodshed the streets became a constant war zone between hunter and beast as the plague spiraled out of control and countless citizens succumbed to the scourge soon the otto workshop developed into something else as the beasts grew more and more numerous and more and more dangerous the powder kegs were born in response with them came a young man named jura jura was like the pc a pale blood hunter guided by german when the old yharnam hunt began jura awoke in the hunter's dream he acted as the pc of his time he started weak but gathered blood echoes and gained strength through the doll he lit lamps he left notes he slew bosses and probably died many times reawakening at the lamp and trying again during this time he came into contact with the powder kegs jura joined the powder kegs in hunting the beasts of old yharnam he grew to use their equipment and they considered him an honorary member and likely a friend but as old yharnam grew more and more tainted with ash and blood the scourge spread when the line between man and beast was blurred the red moon hung low jura looking down at his fallen comrades opened his notebook and left a note the red moon hangs low and beasts ruled the streets are we left no other choice than to burn it all to cinders but as old yanum grew more and more tainted with old blood the scourge spread the scourge of the beast was too great and the powder kegs could no longer stem the tide through simply hunting beasts the powder kegs with their flare for the dramatic their bombastic nature and their love of flame and explosions were not gentle with old yharnam the city was cleansed the powder kegs raised it to the ground with the blood moon high over the sky and the beasts overpowering the hunters saw no choice but to burn it all down the attire of the charred hunter gear worn by the powder kegs who cleansed the city states wearers of this attire hunted down victims of the scourge who survived the raging flames and stench of singed blood men women and children were hunted and purged the entire city was cleansed to keep the scourge of the beast from spreading jura participated in all of it it's possible the juror tried to put a stop to it or it's possible that he willingly gleefully participated in the slaughter either way old yanum was devastated never to recover with the dawn approaching jira returned to the hunter's dream where gammon the first hunter met him by the tree racked by guilt and shame at the carnage he had caused he sunk to his knees and accepted his death severing his connection to the hunter's dream when he awoke the sun had risen and the hunt was over by now the workshop had branded and condemned the powder kegs as heretics those powder kegs who hadn't died in combat had become so drunk on blood that they had been dragged into the hunter's nightmare all that remained was jura and so he went to old janum where he had caused so much horror and cast aside his hunter's vows if nobody else cared about the beasts of old yharnam then he would protect them from any further bloodshed [Music] chapter 4 ludwig the hunts father gascoigne and eileen what's that smell the sweet blood oh it seems to me it's enough to make a man sick [Music] father gascoigne when we as players are first thrust into bloodborne we do not deal with eldritch monstrosities horrible truths or inconceivable entities beyond the reach of space and time none of these facets of bloodborne were ever included in promotional material the terrible truth of bloodborne's lovecraftian mythos was kept a secret up until its very release what we first find is the hunt thrust into it scared and desperate for answers in yanum blood flows like water you will find no bars in yanum no pubs or taverns only blood is found in yanam the pungent blood cocktail tells us in yharnam they produce more blood than alcohol as the former is far more intoxicating blood is the source of pleasure entertainment worship and devotion in yharnam even ariana a prostitute by trade introduces herself to the hunter not by offering sexual services but instead a vial of her blood but it's not just any blood that flows through ghanam only blood permitted by the healing church is allowed to flow the old blood specifically the blood vibritus is administered to the population by special doctors known as blood ministers who carry on an art that was first pioneered by the first vicar lawrence we've already discussed how ebritus gets her name from a species of butterfly but she also gets her name from a latin word meaning drunkenness or intoxication indeed the blood of the breeders not only aided to cleanse yanum of disease but also provided the citizens with a drug more addictive and more intoxicating than alcohol but with the rampant spread of the old blood came the scourge of the beasts once old yharnam had been cleansed and the scourge became public knowledge a new way of dealing with the threat was required secrecy would no longer be enough and so the workshop was retired and sealed instead with the healing church in its new position of power the healing church hunters were born at the forefront of this new movement would be ludwig the new head of the healing church's martial force german tells us the following the healing church and the blood ministers who belong to it were once guardians of the hunters in the times of the hunter ludwig according to the sword hunter badge ludwig was the first of many healing church hunters to come many of whom were clerics not much is known of ludwig's origins but from his radiant sword hunter badge we learn that ludwig was part of a lineage of chivalrous warriors known as the holy blades the radiant sword indicates the heirs to the will of ludwig these hunters also known as holy blades are what remains of an ancient line of heroes that date back to a very early age of honor and chivalry ludwig had a very different approach to hunting beasts than his predecessors in the workshop had which we can see from the details found in the weapons of choice of healing church hunters a trick weapon typically used by healing church hunters it is said that the silver sword was employed by ludwig the first hunter of the church when transformed it combines with its sheath to form a greatsword the healing church workshop began with ludwig and departed from old germans techniques to provide hunters with the means to hunt more terrifying beasts and perhaps things still worse ludwig's holy blade a rifle typically used by healing church hunters it is said that this rifle was employed by ludwig the first hunter of the church its long heavy barrel makes up in range for what it lacks in reload speed ludwig's rifle exhibits several departures from the workshop's design suggesting that the church anticipated much larger in human beasts ludwig's rifle from these two weapons we can see a drastic shift in design from gammon's workshop to ludwig's while the hunters of gammon's time favored agile weapons quick movement and easily concealable tools ludwig's hunters wielded weapons with great force these hunters no longer hid in the shadows they walked openly wielding their weapons after old yharnam it had become painfully clear to the healing church that only more and more dangerous creatures would arise from the old blood and so more powerful weapons would be required ludwig sought to deal with the scourge of the beast in a very different manner than his predecessors in the time of lawrence and gaiman the healing church and the workshop operated in secrecy the school of menses quietly researched lawrence perfected blood ministration and germans hunters acted as a cleanup crew fixers of problems an individual would succumb and the hunters would quietly remove them in the middle of the night leaving the population none the wiser with ludwig however a new approach was taken do not ignore the populace arm the populace we see this from the yharnam hunter attire ludwig the first hunter of the healing church once recruited the animites to serve as hunters this hunter's attire was made for new recruits and has excellent straightforward defense but not nearly enough to allow an ordinary man to stand any real chance against the beasts ludwig would deal with the beasts not through secrecy but through purges or hunts arm the population informed them and work alongside the citizens of janam to battle the beasts the church called for the hunts it would unfortunately cause a never-ending cycle beasts rise in order to combat the beasts the citizens rise up imbibe in the old blood and strike them down now that they've been tainted by the old blood they inevitably become beasts causing yet more citizens to rise up and imbibe in the old blood even more problematic was the fact that as the hunts called for stronger hunters stronger hunters would become stronger beasts ludwig was the first of many healing church hunters to come many of whom were clerics as it was clerics transformed into the most hideous beasts hunters would become drunk on blood addled by it intoxicated by it the hunters would become a threat and so it was that we find ourselves now faced with a different group one that seems to be particularly mysterious the hunters of hunters in central ghana the hunter encounters eileen the crow who warns them sternly prepare yourself for the worst there are no humans left they're all flesh hungry beasts now it's the polar opposite of jurors warning that the beasts are still humans eileen belongs to a mysterious organization known as the hunters of hunters detailed in the hunter rune this red smudged rune means hunter and has been adopted by those who have taken the hunter of hunter's oath these watchmen admonish those who have become addled with blood be they men or beasts anyone who has threatened the pledges of the hunter oath surely has an issue with blood the hunters of hunters it would appear are an order old as the workshop itself tasked with disposing of hunters who have been lost to the intoxication of the old blood the crow hunter badge tells us the badge of the hunter of hunters is quietly passed down from generation to generation usually to an outsider from the hinterlands the use of the singular an outsider seems to imply that there is only ever one hunter of hunters at any one point in time once a generation it is interesting that it specifies that the hunters of hunters are typically outsiders eileen herself speaks with an accent unlike a yanamite perhaps whoever the hunters of hunters are it was decided that janamites blood drunk that they were would not to be trusted with this important task but it's the hunters of hunters origin that interests me the most where on earth did they come from the crow feather attire gives us a small amount of information hunters of hunters dress as crows to suggest sky burial the first hunter of hunters came from a foreign land and gave the dead a virtuous native funeral ritual rather than impose a blasphemous yanum burial service upon them with the hope that former compatriots might be returned to the skies and find rest in the hunter's stream the explicit mentioning of the hunter's dream is very very peculiar eileen herself appears to know about the hunter's dream as if the pc hunter attacks and dies to her she will respond by instructing them to tell the little doll i said hello like jura eileen appears to have at one point been a dreamer a pale blood hunter like the pc no more dreams for me this is my last chance it's not the only link that eileen and the hunters of hunters have to gammon and the hunter's dream the blades of mercy the weapon of the hunters of hunters states a special trick weapon passed down among hunters of hunters one of the oldest weapons of the workshop splits into two when activated the weapon's warped blades are forged with ciderite a rare mineral of the heavens one of the oldest weapons indeed the blades of mercy are one of only two trick weapons made of cytorite a rare mineral that fell from the heavens the other is german's burial blade the first of the trick weapons a masterpiece that defined the entire array of weapons crafted at the workshop its blade is forged with ciderite said to have fallen from the heavens exactly what connection gammon has to the hunters of hunters is unknown it's possible that the hunters of hunters were formed to police and oversee the workshop or it's possible there may have been a splinter faction that separated from german whatever their reasons their methods are clear find hunters who have succumbed to bloodlust and end them two such hunters would be two of eileen's targets henrik and gascoigne father gascoigne is the first official boss in bloodborne while it's possible to fight the cleric beast that boss is optional gascoigne serves as the first true boss fight in the game and he is one that serves as a very cold wake-up call to the player like many souls veterans i walked into bloodborne with a very specific mindset caution study the opponent look for weaknesses wait for their guard to be down strike once back watch strike it's a very slow cautious passive play style that the souls games have hardened in many players gascoigne seems to be placed so early in the game specifically for players like that gascoigne has the exact same tools that the hunter can wield he uses a hunter axe as his weapon and a blunderbuss as his firearm he can be staggered and he can stagger he's a parallel to the player in this manner really the only difference between gascoigne and the hunter is the insanely aggressive manner in which he fights gascoigne charges with blind abandonment he weaves through the fight swiftly dodging attacks and keeping pressure on the hunter it's almost a direct message to the player from the developers you have the same tools as him why are you losing he's not being unfair he's not cheating he's just playing the game just like you so why is he slaughtering you the player very quickly learns that they must adapt to gascoigne or they will die passivity is no longer a valid strategy in order to master bloodborne the player must be swift aggressive and unrelenting like gascoigne but once gascoigne's health gets low enough he will transform he will succumb fully to the scourge becoming a powerful beast that will relentlessly assault the hunter but to really understand gascoigne let's start at the beginning and analyze what we can learn about him from the game itself from gascoigne's attire we learn that father is a title used for clerics in a foreign land and there is no such rank in the healing church this would seem to imply that gascoigne came to janam like many others in search of the miraculous blood administration which was rumored to cure any disease the pc hunter was one such individual as was gilbert and likely many others like eileen and gilbert gascoigne's voice has an accent that differs slightly from the animites seeing as gascoigne wears a tyre similar to that of a healing church watcher and wields the weapons of the workshop he was clearly trained as a healing church hunter after he came to yanum but his attire notes that the dingy scarf is a holy shawl and symbol of the healing church from which gascoigne would eventually part ways it's unclear exactly why gascoigne left the church but perhaps he left in order to raise a family after all gascoigne's daughters can be spoken to in janam hiding in their house indeed the daughters provide the last key pieces of information on gascoigne are you a hunter we look for my mum daddy never came back from the hunt and she went to find him but now she's gone too i'm all alone and scared it would seem that when the hunt was called gascoin answered though he had left the church he still rose up to cleanse the streets along with the rest of janam when he didn't return his wife viola went off looking for him my mom wears a red brooch it's so big and beautiful you won't miss it when we find gascoigne he is hacking a corpse to pieces he turns to face the hunter having finally succumbed to the old blood this all over the shop you will be one of them sooner or later on a nearby balcony a red brooch dangles from the corpse of a dead woman but how did it all come to this what happened to ludwig what is the story behind father gascoigne and why is eileen in yanum everything changed after old janam the church seen as saviors were now in control no longer did they require secrecy instead they flourished and gained power with this power and with the spread of the scourge the workshop was retired and replaced with the healing church hunters led by a hunter named ludwig ludwig was a courageous honorable and chivalrous man who took a new approach to the hunters by recruiting openly training the population of yharnam to combat the dangers of the hunt and working on designing new weapons to eliminate the beasts without issue ludwig was the heir to a legacy of ancient heroes known as the holy blades dating back many generations it's possible he was one of gaiman's apprentices who succeeded gammon after his retirement and was put in charge of the new reformed workshop in the upper cathedral ward it's in this workshop that we can find the radiant sword hunter badge which allows the player to purchase ludwig's blade and rifle but the radiant sword hunter badge also unlocks another piece of equipment the tomb prospector attire it is described as follows attire of tomb prospectors who explore the old labyrinth on behalf of the healing church the healing church traces its roots to byrgenwerth and is therefore aware of the ruins true importance they contain much more than mere hunter trinkets indeed they hide the very secrets of the old great ones sought after by those with the insight to imagine greatness we can now get a better picture of ludwig's arsenal judging from the equipment made available by obtaining his badge ludwig wielded a holy blade and a rifle his weapons of choice along with them he wore tomb prospector attire or at least he did at one point it's possible that ludwig traveled into the labyrinth in search of a weapon or an answer to put an end to the scourge once and for all maybe he simply wanted the truth to know where the scourge came from what he found was the holy moonlight sword an arcane sword discovered long ago by ludwig when blue moonlight dances around the sword and it channels the abyssal cosmos its great blade will hurl a shadowy light wave the holy moonlight sword is synonymous with ludwig the holy blade but few have ever set eyes on the great blade and whatever guidance it has to offer it seems to be of a very private elusive sort holy moonlight sword it must have been fate that the heir to the legacy of the holy blades would find such a weapon with it in hand ludwig truly did become the holy blade a hero to the people who feared the scourge of the beast and a leader to the church hunters who followed him into battle but as the moonlight sword's description states few people ever saw the blade it would seem that ludwig kept it very close to him not allowing others to lay eyes upon it ah you were at my side all along true mentor my guiding moonlight the holy moonlight sword was more than just a blade the blade offered guidance to ludwig as is described by the guidance roon when ludwig closed his eyes he saw darkness or perhaps nothingness and that is where he discovered the tiny beings of light ludwig was certain that these playful dancing sprites offered guidance and emptied ludwig of his fears at least in the midst of a hunt when he hunted ludwig allowed the sword to guide him he closed his eyes and followed the guidance of the moonlight sword as he cut down beasts he had no fear in his heart and became a weapon for the healing church without fear in our hearts we're little different from the beasts themselves eileen the crow the shift in ludwig's personality did not go unnoticed ludwig's dialogue reveals that there were those who accused him of being a beast-possessed degenerate even in the back of his mind he knew that what he was doing was wrong good hunter have you seen the thread of light just a hair a fleeting thing yet i clung to it steeped as i was in the stench of blood and beasts i never wanted to know what it really was really i didn't yet he continued to use the holy moonlight sword and follow its guidance hoping to secure a future where the healing church hunters became honorable warriors who protected the people he would suffer any denigration if it meant that goal could be achieved in the end ludwig became further and further steeped in bloodshed with each swing of the holy moonlight sword he descended further into beasthood eventually blood drunk as he was ludwig was dragged into the hunter's nightmare cursed to wallow in a pit of corpses for all eternity with ludwig gone the healing church hunters slowly began to fall apart organized hunts became mobs as janamites wandered the streets dragging the infected out and burning them at the stake the hunters themselves began to rely more and more on communion for strength the healing church administered more old blood to their hunters in order to give them the power to vanquish the beasts one of these hunters was father gascoigne gascoigne had come to yharnam in search of a cure to his disease seeing the famous blood ministration of janam as his last chance at salvation it was there that he was trained as a hunter possibly by a man named henrik very little is known of henrik but he wears the garb not of a healing church hunter but of a workshop hunter one of germans henrik is also mentioned multiple times as being an old hunter gascoigne and henrik would quickly become a powerful duo partner hunters and good friends according to henrik's hunter garb the taciturn old hunter henrik was once partners with father gascoigne and though they were a fierce and gallant duo their partnership led to henrik's tragically long life the last sentence particularly interests me the use of the phrase a tragically long life it's possible that henrik old as he was either grew sick or weakened in his age gascoigne not only wanted to see his closest friend live but he had another reason for wanting the old hunter to continue on he loved henrik's daughter yes okay thank you mr hunter i love you almost as much as mom and dad and granddad gascoigne's unnamed daughter indeed when we encounter henrik we find him in odin tomb just as we found gascoigne only henrik is not standing by the grave where gascoigne was found he is standing in front of the corpse of viola gascoigne's wife but henrik is not himself any longer he has succumbed to the old blood gascoigne had fallen in love with viola henrik's daughter perhaps gascoigne convinced henrik in his old and weakened state to accept communion from the healing church the old workshop hunter was likely wary of the old blood but was convinced by his son-in-law the father of his grandchildren to accept the ministration gascoigne too had accepted the ministration but in his case there were complications if you find my mum you've had this music box it plays one of daddy's favorite songs and when daddy forgets us we play it for him so he remembers i'm so silly running off without it while the old blood of the healing church can cure any disease it cannot repair a damaged mind father gascoigne had come to yharnam in search of a cure to his mental illness but the blood ministration had failed even the tainted blood of the great ones could not fix the bounce of insanity he suffered it's possible that during his episodes in which he forgot the faces of his family gascoigne grew violent irrational or paranoid viola his beloved wife would play him a lullaby it would ease his mind and help him to stay grounded and sane but gascoigne intoxicated as he was with the old blood continued to hunt and continued to accept communion the ministration of blood when gascoigne failed to return from the hunt viola left her children locked inside and fled to find him to bring him home but she forgot the music box when she found him he was drenched in blood killing man and beast alike she pleaded with him to come home to remember her but he would have none of it viola died that night killed by the man she loved if the player uses the music box in the fight against father gascoigne he suffers noticeable pain he grasps his head muttering and moaning how else could he possibly react as he remembers the terrible things he did to his beloved viola henrik soon goes searching for viola and gascoigne fearful of what may have happened to them when he found viola's corpse he was empty his tragically long life would be ended by eileen the crow hunter of hunters this too is hunter's work but it bears no honor i lean the crow if the hunter assists eileen in killing henrik then after the blood moon has risen they will find eileen mortally wounded in front of the grand cathedral i'm afraid i've made a bit of a blunder i'm just going to have a short rest though don't worry i've taken blood enough to save an old woman no more dreams for me this is my last chance what a fool i am i'll have to trade carefully but that thing still lies in weight turn back this is my score to settle many years ago gammon founded the workshop much like the pc hunter can gammon wielded two weapons the burial blade and the blades of mercy both weapons were forged of ciderite by gammon the first hunter gammon was not alone as a hunter he had several apprentices who he trained to carry on his legacy him and his apprentices practiced a special art known as quickening as evidenced by the old hunter's bone the bone of an old hunter whose name is lost it is said that he was an apprentice to old german and the practitioner of the art of quickening a technique particular to the first hunters there are only four individuals in the entire game who can use the art of quickening the pc hunter if they clutch the old hunter's bone gearman who uses a significantly more powerful version of quickening maria german's greatest pupil and an individual known only as the bloody crow the bloody crow is found in the grand cathedral as the final fight in eileen's questline it is a very difficult fight it would seem that eileen came to yharnam with the goal of hunting down this mark the bloody crow along the way she slew henrik and would have slain gascoigne if the hunter had not beaten her to the punch we know very little of the bloody crow but we can see that he wields a shikaji blade and has strong ties to cainhurst with his use of numbing mist and his dropping of a blood rapture rune most bizarre is that he wears the crow feather garb of a hunter of hunters the bloody crow of cainhurst evidently one of the first hunters as evidenced by his use of the art of quickening here we can paint a possible picture in the infant days of the workshop german trained his apprentices and gave one of them the blades of mercy mercy is a central theme to german it appears to be his goal to grant mercy to hunters who either are trapped in the dream or have succumbed to bloodlust this apprentice he tasked with the important job of acting as an unseen watcher of the workshop forming a new order of people separated from communion and the old blood of yharnam what happened next is very unclear and for the most part completely unexplained perhaps this apprentice traveled to cainhurst or perhaps travelled into the hinterlands to train the next hunter of hunters who would travel to janam whatever happened we can see the results the bloody crow of cainhurst possibly the first hunter of hunters or possibly the one who supervised and trained eileen eileen wishes to put him to rest to grant him mercy but what fascinated me the most about eileen is what happens if the player never encounters her at all if the pc hunter never speaks to eileen then if they travel to the grand cathedral after the blood moon has risen they will suddenly be attacked by eileen herself eileen accuses the hunter of succumbing to bloodlust it is through this dialogue that eileen reveals how she truly feels the hunters must die the nightmare must end eileen herself knows full well the way in which the hunter's dream sustains and propagates the hunters indeed the hunters themselves are being manipulated by the great ones into carrying out their eldritch tasks what if there were no more hunters none left to seek the blood or carry out the will of the blood moon would the nightmare end think of the way we as players thrill every time we slay a boss how we rush to the dream to grow stronger how we want only to continue hunting to continue growing in power few hunters can resist the intoxication of the hunt look at you just the same as all the rest maybe she's right chapter five volta the league and the vermin just think now you're all set to hunt and kill to your heart's content volta beast eater the beasts and the kin these are the two types of enemies that we face in bloodborne one is born of the scourge of the beast humans tainted from the influence of the old blood the other are ascended humans who have purged their body of the scourge and have become kin of the cosmos pure beings there is something else though some strange third thing that seems to be right around the corner yet somehow avoid description it's almost like there's something we just can't put our fingers on right in front of our nose to try and pinpoint what this thing is let us examine volta the beast eater and his league of confederates we first encounter volder in the forbidden woods where he introduces himself to the player i am walter master of the league members of the league cleanse the streets of all the filth that spread about during the hunt like any half-decent hunter altar you know haven't you seen enough of these wretched bass freakish slugs and my doctors sentence these fiends to death the league appears to have been an organization that exists during the transitionary period from gammon's workshop into ludwig's however volta has been in yharnam for quite some time according to the constable garb worn by volta there is a rather popular fable in janam once upon a time a troop of foreign constables chased a beast all the way to janam and this is what they wore the constables became victims of the beast except for one survivor who in turn devoured the creature whole all by himself as volta's title is that of the beast eater it's very reasonable to assume that he is the constable from this fable it was when volta consumed a beast an utterly unholy act that an oath rune was born within him impurity this rune discovered inside the forbidden beast eater came to symbolize impurity and the oath of the league confederates of the league hunt to discover vermin vermin writhe within filth and are the root of man's impurity crush all vermin without hesitation when volta performed such a tainted act he gained the impurity rune and the ability to see vermin and with this ability he formed the league the league dedicated to hunting down vermin consisted of individuals who were brought face to face with the root of man's impurity and suffered the consequences we only know of three confederates other than volta the first is yamamura the wanderer who is described by his garb as garb of a distant eastern land worn by yamamura the wanderer this eastern warrior pursued a beast for honorable revenge then became a hunter of the league but when he stared straight into impurity it drove him mad it would appear yamamura's membership of the league was rather short-lived as as soon as the impurity oath was committed to his memory he was driven mad so while yamamura plays a relatively minor role in the league two more significant figures are the madaras twins from the butcher mask we learn it is a mask of the madaras twins denizens of the forbidden woods likely belonging to the older of the two the twins grew up in silent kinship with a poisonous snake eventually they learned human ways and became hunters when they discovered vermin even in their beloved snake the younger brother is said to have murdered the older furthermore we learned from the butcher garb that both the twins became hunters and brought back and dissected their beast prey in order to support the villagers in their forbidden research what was the forbidden research of the villagers what twisted discovery brought yamamura to madness and most importantly what are the vermin sometime early in yharnam's history a group of foreign constables chased a beast into the city the beast however turned and devoured the constables one by one the sole survivor was volta who slew the beast and in some twisted maddened hunger for revenge devoured the beast in turn this unholy act branded volta as the beast eater and within him was borned the oath rune impurity when volta turned and gazed throughout the city of janam he found he could now see those who had become impure tainted with filth in order to combat this new threat volta formed the league gathering a group of confederates and branding them with the impurity rune so that they could see the true root of man's impurity in regards to the timeline of when exactly this took place it appears to have taken place during the time when hunters were in the transitionary period away from german's workshop but not yet fully formed with ludwigs we see that volta favored the whirly gig saw a weapon designed by the powder kegs and so it's likely that the league was in full force during the time of old yharnam two confederates of the league would be the madaras twins wild folk from the forbidden woods who were trained in the art of hunting madara's twins had a great love for their beloved poisonous snake alongside whom they had grown up together the madara's whistle tells us the twins grew up alongside a poisonous snake and developed a silent inhuman kinship the poisonous snake grew uncontrollably raised on a healthy diet of beast entrails it appears that the twins would bring the victims of their hunts back to the woods with them not only feeding them to their snake but also handing them over to the villagers to aid in their research as referenced in the butcher garb but what research was occurring in the forbidden woods it's simple ash and blood the healing church was at this time using the forbidden woods and the nearby poisonous swamp as their laboratory for the research and development of ashen blood the healing church was studying the parasitic reaches found in the poisonous swamp not only to develop it for use in old jhanam but also to discover the source of the poison the source of the poison of the filth where did this poison come from recall the butcher mask when they discovered vermin even in their beloved snake the younger brother is said to have murdered the older a centipede-like creature discovered on successful hunts by league hunters vermin found hidden within filth are only seen by league confederates and are the root of man's impurity the league has assumed the task of finding and crushing old vermin perhaps there is some mercy in the madness those who wish to see vermin can and those who choose to are provided with boundless purpose vermin the poison swamp was teeming with vermin unseen by those who had not committed the impurity rune to memory as the madaras twins slaughtered the infected vermin riddled beasts and fed them to their snake the creature became tainted and riddled with the parasitic creatures this is the source of the snake parasite of the forbidden woods vermin infested the local wildlife and in turn the wildlife infested the villagers the snakes spat poison at their enemies the ashen blood turned against the very people who had developed it in the first place ashen blood the poison the vermin perhaps it is the case that all cases of poison in the game are cases of ash and blood and in turn are caused by the vermin after all the antidote tablets that we use to treat ashen blood are still in circulation today if we look at the nightmare frontier for example we can recall the poisonous swamp that lovable trustworthy patches knocks us into here we can find countless leeches and large creatures known as crawlers interestingly enough the crawlers do not take extra damage as either beasts or kin they are something else vermin infesting the loran silver beasts we even find more maggots likely teeming with vermin themselves we as players of a video game are so conditioned to think of poison as some random nameless vague side effect that we never stop to think what this poison actually is and if it has a root cause this brings us to the blood lickers large flea-like creatures they are first discovered in canehurst alongside a group of parasitic leeches while described as beasts interestingly enough they do not suffer from damage bonuses against beasts they are something else not kin not beast vermin what if the vermin were to infest a human not just one or two vermin but an entire colony of the parasites squirming and writhing within the blood of a human being no doubt they would be tainted no doubt they would be forbidden no doubt they would be vile chapter 6 cainhurst castle the executioners and queen anneliese [Music] once a scholar betrayed his fellows at byrgenwerth and brought forbidden blood back with him to cainhurst castle it was there that the first of the inhuman vile bloods was born the vilebloods are fiendish creatures who threaten the purity of the church's blood healing the ruler of the vilebloods is still alive today and so to honor my master's wishes i search for the path to cainhurst castle alfred vile blood hunter if you're like me you were excited the very moment the stagecoach pulled up to greet you at hemwick the journey to cainhurst castle and the exploration of the new area provides a nice breath of fresh air and a pleasant interruption in bloodborne in which we are shown a whole new area with a whole new mystery canehurst is an area unlike any other in bloodborne to be perfectly honest it doesn't really fit in does it a forsaken castle ruled by an undead queen the weeping ghosts of murdered women wandering haunted chambers man eating gargoyles lying in wait to ambush unsuspecting prey really the area would fit much more into demon souls than it does into bloodborne cainhurst is so unlike any other area in bloodborne even from a gameplay perspective after all cainhurst is the only area in the game that offers a dark souls style covenant for the player to join so to get to the bottom of the mystery of castle cainhurst let's start by taking a look at cainhurst itself what we know about it what we can glean and what monsters wander its halls while in janum blood is an object of worship in cainhurst blood is an object of desire the nobles of cainhurst were elitist and aristocratic enjoying form and elegance over strength or functionality as described in the night's set attire of the knights of cainhurst a regal piece graced by intricate gold work the cainhurst way is a mix of nostalgia and bombast they take great pride in the blood-stained corpses of beasts that they leave behind confident that they will stand as examples of decadent art in cainhurst your status at court is everything the closer you are to the queen the more important you are the further away you are the less you matter the blood rapture rune states this rune resonates with servants of the queen carrier of the child of blood who yearn for their queen's blood with little hope of requitement for them they find solace in blood rapture that serves as a surrogate for their desires the highest of honors in cainhurst was to be named a vile blood one of the elite inner circle of queen anneliese as evidenced by the ritual queen annelise makes the pc hunter perform should they wish to become a vile blood the vile bloods imbibed in the queen's blood while yanamites share blood through injection and transfusion the nobles of cainhurst seemed to drink it directly from the source as queen annelise extends her wrist to the hunter the vilebloods were the elite guard of the queen and would travel out to hunt for her bringing tribute back to her in the form of blood drags we will explore the vilebloods and queen annalise further in a later section but for now let's focus on the lesser important figures in cainhurst and what information we can gather from them the old nobles long time imbibers of blood are no strangers to the sanguine plague and the disposal of beasts was a discreet task left to their servants or knights as they were called for the sake of appearances right upper lash while there are beasts in cainhurst they are much different from the beasts of yharnam there is no sign of lycanthropy the main symptom of the condition we refer to as the scourge of the beast anywhere to be found in cainhurst instead the beasts of cainhurst are twisted malformed things that drain the blood from the ground the official description of the bloodlickers reads with no host left to defend cainhurst castle from the beastly siege these deadly vile creatures prowl the grounds gorging themselves on the tainted fluid of the fallen indeed the bloodlickers seem far more interested in draining blood from corpses than they are of the pc hunter unlike yharnam's beasts which rip and tear flesh to shreds in pure rage the blood lickers move quietly from corpse to corpse drinking we have here an example of a very different kind of beast one wholly unlike the beasts of yharnam the arnhem beasts we know are the result of individuals succumbing to the tainted blood of the great ones infected thanks to the use of blood ministration the bloodlickers infested with vermin must have a different origin let us recall what alfred says about cainhurst once a scholar betrayed his fellows at byrgenwerth and brought forbidden blood back with him to cainhurst castle whatever blood was brought to cainhurst it was most certainly not the blood of the great ones it was something different forbidden impure the introduction of this forbidden blood led to a new mission by the then burgeoning healing church and the formation of the executioners in his time master legarius led his executioners into cainhurst castle to cleanse it of the vilebloods but all did not go well and master logarius became a blessed anchor guarding us from evil tragic tragic times that master legarius should be abandoned in the accursed domain of the vilebloods i must free him so that he may be properly honored in martyrdom alfred little is known of the executioners they were a group of hunters who led by a man named lagarius traveled to cainhurst and battled the vile bloods it would seem the executioners existed in the very early days of the healing church back when the church was still operating mostly in secrecy the executioner attire reads attire worn by the band of executioners commanded by the martyr lagarius later became the basis for all church attire with its heavy draping of holy shawl this would seem to suggest that the executioners were the first case of an organized group of the church operating in the open as before then there were no section of the church wearing their familiar uniform what this means for alfred is unknown he claims to be a simple hunter perhaps he simply sought to emulate the teachings of lagarius he certainly has a great deal of veneration for him his entire mission being to complete ligarius's mission once and for all to elevate him to true martyrdom whatever alfred's motivations behind following the path of the executioner we know that the executioners of old did battle against the cainhurst wild bloods from the accounts we have access to it was not a close battle legarius wheel describes itself as being used to slaughter the vilebloods in cainhurst bathed in pools of their blood and forever steeped in their ire slaughter is the key word here the nobles of cainhurst were systematically executed the vilebloods were bludgeoned to death by the mighty wheels of lagarius for all their elegance and beauty the earthed vilebloods were no match for the fury of the executioners but there was one vile blood who could not be slain and this brings us to the final topic of our current analysis i am annalise queen of castle cainhurst ruler of the vile bloods and sworn enemy of the church annelise is a very strange figure in bloodborne and like i mentioned earlier doesn't really seem to fit she is most assuredly something far more than simply human in fact the queen is immortal there is no way to kill her even alfred who rips her limb from limb smashes her into pulp tears out her organs smears her against the floor and leaves her nothing more than a pile of blood and meat fails to kill her indeed she is left simply writhing eerily what good's your immortality now try stirring up trouble in this sorry state all mangled and twisted with every inside on the outside for all the world to see alfred the queenly flesh a chunk of meat the pc hunter can retrieve from her remains reads this pinkish lump of flesh remains warm as if cursed all hail the undying queen of blood anneliese is never dead her consciousness remains inside of the meat and can be used to repair her indeed annalise can even be restored from her mangled state if the hunter brings the queenly flesh to the corpse in the altar of despair but anneliese is not unique in this she is not the only immortal queen in bloodborne upon defeating yanum queen of thumeru the hunter receives the arnhem stone it appears to be meaty organic remains and even has the fate outline of a fetus within it the arnhem stone reads the queen lies dead but her horrific consciousness is only asleep and it stirs in unsettling motions in the depths of ancient thumeru the bergenworth scholars studied and researched the old blood of the great ones however the scholars found much more than the great ones they found those who had once worshipped them the thumerians it's not exactly clear if they directly located queen jarnam or if they simply gathered blood samples from the thumerians themselves however it's most likely that some of yharnam's blood was recovered and researched the old blood while to be feared was not forbidden it seems strange that the scholars seekers of truth would label anything as forbidden yharnam's blood must have been so tainted so vile and impure that it was not to be toyed with perhaps this blood was teeming with vermin the source of the thumerian's seemingly magical abilities queen yarnham's mastery over blood is unlike anything seen in bloodborne during the battle against her she seems to teleport spray blood from her fingertips and summons blades in the air of pure blood the queen also appears to be able to project herself from her prison in thumeru appearing in both the nightmare of menses and the moonside lake neither human nor great one queen yarnam is some twisted impure mix of the two possibly as a result of her impregnation by odin the formless great one of blood one scholar however betrayed their fellows this may have been maria we already know that maria was of cainhurst descent perhaps after the hamlet massacre maria was disillusioned enough to bring the impure yharnam's blood back to her people however it doesn't really seem to fit as maria is associated with the early healing church the healing church most assuredly fears the blood of queen jarnam and even labels her blood as forbidden as well the blood of ariana's description reads a member of the old healing church would know that her blood is similar indeed to precisely what was once forbidden ariana even wears a canehurst dress furthering the connection between the two figures perhaps the scholar who brought the forbidden blood to cainhurst was just an unnamed scholar or perhaps it was maria or even the bloody crow either way queen jharnam's tainted blood made its way to cainhurst castle queen annelise imbibed in the tainted vermin riddled forbidden blood of yharnam becoming first of the vile bloods but annalise was not satisfied with the simple transformation that followed she sought an heir a child of blood and elise believed that through the mass consumption of powerful blood she would be able to impregnate herself and give birth to the child of blood and so she created the vile bloods the cainhurst attire says this paper-thin silver armor is said to deflect blood of ill intent and is what allows the royal guards to capture prey for their beloved queen so that one day she may bear a child of blood the vile bloods set out into the night seeking powerful beings to capture and drag back in chains to their queen hunters would become the favored prey for the vile bloods the blood drag an item the pc hunter can recover if they have the corruption rune equipped tells us the vile bloods of cainhurst blood lusting hunters see these frightful things in cold blood they often appear in the blood of echo fiends that is to say the blood of hunters queen anneliese partakes in these blood dreg offerings so that she may one day bear the child of blood the next vile blood air look at the image of the blood drag item look at the small things that seem to squirm inside of it they rather look like sperm don't they annalise believed that the consumption of the blood of powerful figures would allow her to eventually conceive a child of blood whatever a child of blood is it would never come to pass the church discovered of this new threat and formed a response in the form of the executioners led by legarius the wheel hunter badge tells us mata lagarius led a band of executioners and this badge was crafted at their dedicated workshop their workshop was a secretive enclave of mystical beliefs and heady fanaticism which served as the backbone of the executioner's unique brand of justice again we can see the reference to secrecy describing the church's early style of operating in darkness the executioners stormed castle cainhurst and slaughtered the vile bloods the nobles were shown no mercy as cainhurst fell to the invaders but when lagarius marched into the queen's throne room he found that no matter what he did she would not die perhaps simply imbibing queen jarnam's blood had granted annalise power beyond death or perhaps it was the accumulation of blood dregs that had given her immortality either way lagarius ruled that queen anneliese would never be allowed freedom if she could not be killed she must be made prisoner for all eternity to prevent the birth of her child of blood a mask was forced onto her covering her entire there are no references or information available to be found on what exactly this mask is other than looking at it as she wears it however whatever power the mask holds has bound her in the throne room and left her unable to resist her captivity however this would still not prevent outside sources from meeting with her and bringing her further blood drags as the pc hunter is capable of doing and so ligarius took the crown of cainhurst the crown of illusions and placed it atop his head one of the precious secrets of cainhurst the old king's crown is said to reveal illusions and expose a mirage that hides a secret and so ligarius donned the crown of his own volition determined to prevent a single soul from stumbling upon the vile secret what visions did he see sitting serenely upon his new throne only by wearing the crown of illusions would one be allowed access to analysis throne room to prevent any further interaction with anneliese legarius donned the crown and sat upon the throne of cainhurst acting as a living lock for the prisoner queen recall how legarius's wheel states that it had become bathed in pools of their blood and forever steeped in their ire transforming the wheel reveals how tainted it has become as it contains the strength of the vilebloods within it ligarius ii had become so drenched in the impure blood that he had been forever steeped in the fury of the fallen cainhurst nobles he became undying a part of the bloody spirits of the fallen vilebloods he would remain as such until the pc hunter would end his watch taking the crown of illusions and discovering annalise but what path will the player take will they kneel to the queen and join her bringing her blood will they help alfred in smashing her to pieces which path is the correct one to choose acts of goodness are not always wise and acts of evil are not always foolish but regardless we shall always strive to be good marta lagarius chapter 7 the thumerians ariana oden and mergo in the age of the great ones wedlock was a blood contract only permitted to those slated to bear a special child ring of betrothal the thumerians existed long long ago long before the events of bloodborne take place and yet the echoes of what happened in old thumeru resonate very deeply in the current city of yanum more so than yanamites can possibly know the thumerian society existed centuries or even millennia ago they were a people who were masters of ancient arcane arts specifically relating to arts of fire and arts of blood the thumerian people seemed to be matriarchal or at the very least the most important positions were often held by women the hallways of the ancient labyrinth echo with the sinister bells wrung by the bell ringers when we look at the description of a sinister root chalice we are told when used in a ritual this sinister chalice summons the sinister resonant bell the bell-ringing woman appears to be a mad thumerian aside from the bell ringers we have the keepers a group of eternal warriors who wander the labyrinth caring for its denizens the bone ash armor states the keepers who mind the slumbering great ones gained eternal life preserved in ashen form in a ceremony of flame the created body and soul these women clearly held positions of importance and we do know they are women despite their masks as the voice clips they play during their combat and death animations are that of a female voice actor finally we have the thumerian queen originally the thummerian people had no ruler they worked as simple caretakers of the ancient labyrinth the great thumeru ihil while early thumerians were mere humble guardians of the slumbering great ones their descendants felt entitled to name themselves a leader as thumerian society advanced they grew into a more stable society with a queen as their figurehead the capital of thumeru ihil was named after one such queen possibly the first however it is the last queen of thumeru yanum who will be the focus of our analysis as for the men of thumerian society they seem to provide more of a workforce and military for thumeru the hintertomb chalice tells us tombs are the peripheral catacombs of the old underground labyrinth to this day the watchers continue to expand the hinter tombs unceremonious catacombs filled with graves and death indeed very often will the clanging sound of a pickaxe fill the player's ear as the undead thumerians toil away to expand the labyrinth further and further they are overseen by the watchers fat and girthy men wielding cudgels cleavers burning irons and even shotguns there are also the shadows of janam first encountered in the forbidden woods the shadows are presented to the player far before we know of the queen's true name the only two places the shadows are found are in the forbidden woods and in the nightmare of menses both times in places very close to queen janum herself interestingly enough if the pc hunter wishes they can lure the man-eater boars into the shadows found in the nightmare of menses the shadows will fight and kill the pigs while some of them will die in the process the shadows do not appear to be aligned with the school of mensis at all according to the oxford english dictionary the word shadow has many definitions the most lesser used being an inseparable attendant or companion it's a very clever use of ironic word play by from software to introduce the players first to the shadows of janam leaving them to naturally associate the shadows as being associated with the city jharnam as opposed to the queen the thumerians were as the chalices imply superhuman beings they were close to the eldritch truth and achieved evolution and metamorphosis through the use of blood ministration as evidenced by the fallen thumerian city luran according to the ailing loran chalice the tragedy that struck this ailing land of loren is said to have its roots in the scourge of the beast when the pc hunter travels to the ruins of loran they find a city that in many ways resembles old jhanam it is a place ravaged by the scourge of the beast as the vast majority of its inhabitants are either mindless beasts or mad bell ringers there is even a dark beast the mightiest of the beasts that lurks on the lowest level of the fallen city just as there is one that dwells in old janum in old jhanam the scourge of the beast was a result of the rampant blood ministration by the then newly founded healing church in an attempt to cure the horrible disease ashen blood the lower loran chalice states there are trace remains of medical procedures in parts of ayling loren whether these were attempts to control the scourge of the beast or the cause of the outbreak is unknown we can now put the pieces together and see that what the player is currently experiencing in yharnam once occurred a long long time ago in ancient thumeru through the use of the old blood of the great ones the thumerians were able to ascend and evolve and yet with the tainted blood came the scourge of the beast and possibly even what we would refer to in the modern era of bloodborne as a hunt along with a blood moon this brings us back to the queen when the red moon hangs low the line between man and beast is blurred and when the great ones descend a womb will be blessed with child a note found in the bergenworth mansion the pc hunter first encounters queen janum after the death of rom the vacuous spider the most immediately horrifyingly apparent feature of the queen is the blood staining her stomach it's a sickening moment for the player at least it was for me she is found at the bottom of the moonside lake having seemingly appeared out of nowhere staring up at the sky and weeping there the pc hunter sees the blood moon for the first time and here's the cry of a newborn baby in ancient thumeru the scourge of beasts ravaged the land it must have been then that the blood moon arose perhaps for the very first time and a womb was blessed with child it's unknown if janam was impregnated by the great ones specifically because she was queen or if she was simply a woman chosen at random but she is most assuredly assumed to have been in that hunt the potential mother of a great one as we can see from the blood-stained rags around her stomach the birth did not go well let us now jump forwards hundreds of years back into present day yanum and discuss ariana the pc hunter encounters ariana living in the cathedral ward of janam the lady of the night mistakes the hunter for a potential customer and sends them away telling them that she takes hunts off once the pc hunter has defeated vicar amelia they can convince ariana to seek shelter in either odin chapel or yosefka's clinic sending her to the clinic will end all further interaction with her while sending her to the chapel will allow the pc to encounter and speak with her further once ariana and the pc hunter become acquainted she does what any good yanamite would do and offers her new friend a vial of her blood if the hunter accepts they receive the item blood of ariana it is with this item that we see the first inklings that ariana may be much more than she first seems blood taken from ariana cathedral ward woman of pleasure a member of the old healing church would know that her blood is similar indeed to precisely what was once forbidden why would ariana have blood similar to something that was forbidden after all blood flows like water in yharnam anyone and everyone shares and imbibes in blood with one another what makes ariana's blood special let us for a moment take a look at what the pc hunter encounters should they go to the very depths of the thumerian labyrinth to the very bottom of whomera hill it is here that the hunter fights against the weeping jhanam queen of fumero but take a closer look at her as you fight her and notice that she seems bound chained there is cloth bound around her eyes blinding her and her wrists have been tightly chained together to keep her movement restricted she is restrained for apparently good reason during the fight with janam she will free herself from bondage and display a mastery over blood that can only possibly be defined as magic she melts into blood using it to travel distances she uses blood to create false copies of herself she sprays blood from her fingertips she stabs herself through the wrists and chest in order to summon blades of blood that swing through the air and impale the hunter returning back to ariana one only needs to take a brief look at her features to see the similarities between her and queen janam where do these similarities come from from cainhurst ariana's dress is the dress of a canehurst noblewoman one like queen anneliese their flowing hair long sweeping dress and obvious beauty are all shed the noble dress is found in a canehurst portrait room there are many portraits of nobles and one of a tall crowned woman in a grey dress holding a blonde child perhaps ariana is a descendant of the queen annelise who had imbibed in yanum's forbidden blood or if not royalty perhaps she simply has cainhurst blood in her genes either way her blood is forbidden if the pc hunter has also rescued adela the nun in addition to ariana they may notice that when talking to ariana in the odin chapel if they angled their camera to the side they can notice that every time they speak to ariana adella will rise from her seat to stare and watch the conversation when the hunter finishes speaking to ariana adella will immediately look away and pretend as if she wasn't watching it's a brilliantly subtle way to show that adella has her eye on ariana and is possibly aware of the blasphemous nature of her blood but the similarities between ariana and queen janum do not end with their clothing and facial structure the fate that befell queen janam would centuries later befall ariana every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate queen jhanam's childbirth did not go well judging from the massive amount of blood staining her stomach and the way she is found weeping in front of mergo's loft we can only assume that the child did not survive the birthing process when the blood moon rises over yharnam ariana first starts to feel pain in her stomach there's something wrong with me she will refuse to give the pc hunter any more of her blood and will have nothing to say until after the hunter has slain mikalash in the nightmare of mensis if the pc hunter returns to the cathedral ward they will find ariana's chair empty and a trail of serum clear blood leading towards the tomb of odin following the blood trail we find what is in my opinion the most disturbing scene in the entire game a sobbing ariana next to a squirming wriggling celestial lava covered in blood the implications are unpleasant ariana has gone completely mad muttering sobbing and laughing it can't be this is a nightmare [Laughter] the lava will do nothing but squirm pathetically at her feet until the hunter kills it a single attack from any weapon will do the trick recovered from the dead creature is an umbilical cord every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate and odin the formless great one is no different to think it was corrupted blood that began this eldritch liaison centuries ago the thumerian people discovered the old blood and the great ones using the blood to elevate themselves beyond humanity their height grew their strength was magnified and they gained arcane control over fire and blood however with the old blood comes the scourge of the beast the thumerian city of lorann was the first to succumb to the scourge as an outbreak spread throughout the populace and the thumerians were infected by the scourge and when the line between man and beast is blurred the red moon will hang low the great ones will descend and a womb will be blessed with child queen janam was impregnated but every great one loses its child but the hunt will always begin again and so it did the red moon hung low and the line between beasts and men were blurred and so the great ones descended and a womb was blessed with child the daughter of queen anneliese ariana bore corrupted blood which began an eldritch liaison but with whom this brings us to odin the formless one the formless odin rune states the great one odin lacking form exists only in voice and is symbolized by this rune human or no the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade and the essence of the formless great one odin both odin and his inadvertent worshipers surreptitiously seek the precious blood of all the great ones odin is the one most similar to an outer god of the lovecraftian mythos upon which bloodborne is designed odin is a being of such absurdly complex design that it would be impossible for fromm's software to even put him in their game for describing his shape is something human beings simply can't do odin is also the great one most closely associated with the blood as both runes associated with him formless odin and odin writhe secrete a constant medium of blood and provide the hunter with ways of replenishing or storing the quick silver bullets that are fused with their own blood while the healing church worships several gods it is likely that odin is very high in their pantheon if not their chief god there is an entire chapel devoted to odin's worship the great one of blood around whom all of the healing church revolves odin the formless great one exists quite literally all around us he is literally everywhere without shape and only carrying a voice in this sense odin could also possibly be referred to as the cosmos itself mikulash makes this discovery in the nightmare when he is found communing with a great one he begins by confusing odin with cause believing he is speaking to the dead great one of the ocean ah cause or some say cosm do you hear our prayers halfway through the boss fight mikalash has an epiphany the cosmos of course it's not cosm it's cosmos the choir would discover this truth as well indeed their entire religion would be founded upon it as referenced by the cosmic eye watcher badge badge of a member of the choir elites of the healing church the eye signifies the very cosmos the choir stumbled upon an epiphany very suddenly and quite by accident here we stand feet planted in the earth but might the cosmos be very near us only just above our heads odin is so omnipresent that while he might not be god in the judeo-christian religious sense it is most certainly god-like this would lead the choir's mantra their epiphany the sky and the cosmos are one the early healing church had believed that the great ones were associated with the water as this had been where cause was found the choir however concluded that it was not the sea that linked them to the great ones but the very cosmos itself odin it was odin who impregnated queen janam and it was odin who impregnated ariana the vast majority of players will first encounter the crying of a baby when they are first presented with the blood moon after the death of rom the vacuous spider it is at this point that the line between the waking world and the nightmare begins to blur the blood moon hangs low the amygdala become visible and the constant crying of a baby will begin to follow and haunt the pc hunter as they struggle to understand what is happening many players know that it is possible to see the amygdala before the blood moon rises if they have at least 40 inside but did you know it's also possible to hear the crying baby before the death of rom as well i discovered this when i decided to start with 99 insight and see if anything happened differently what i discovered is that if the pc hunter has an insight above 60 they can hear the crying baby even before the blood moon has risen this would seem to imply that the baby exists far before the menses ritual takes place every great one loses its child and murgo queen jarnam's child with a great one was lost as well when we encounter queen janum in the dreamlands it looks almost as if her stomach has been ripped open a child torn from her womb but when we encounter her in the bottom of the thumerian labyrinth she is noticeably still swollen with child upon her death she drops the arnhem stone in it we see the outline of a fetus roughly one percent of pregnancies are ectopic a complication in pregnancy meaning that the fetus begins to develop outside of the uterus of ectopic pregnancies one percent of them are abdominal in which case the fetus develops in the abdomen of the mother as opposed to the womb when one of these pregnancies fails and the fetus dies it begins to slowly calcify and harden the fetus can remain in the mother for years in many cases the fetus remained calcified and hardened inside of the mother for decades after its death these fetuses are called lithopedians or stone babies this is what the yharnam stone is the calcified corpse of an unborn great one murder stillborn the only thing that would be salvaged from murgo would be his umbilical cord found from the defeated boss fight murgo's wet nurse the chord reads a great relic also known as the chord of the eye every infant great one has this precursor to the umbilical cord every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate this chord granted menses audience with mergo but resulted in the still birth of their brains mykolash had seen both the success of master willem and the failure of lawrence he had seen that in order to ascend one must use a cord of the eye the umbilical cord of a great one when the school of menses attempted to use murgo's umbilical cord to commune with murgo himself the ritual was an enormous and terrible failure it's unclear exactly what it means for a great one to be lost or even to be dead they exist on a plane of existence so far above our own recall that even though something may die in the waking world its consciousness may live on in the nightmare murgo lived on in the nightmare possibly attached in part to the wet nurse or possibly manifested as the wet nurse itself it is likely that the school of mensis made a connection with murko by using his umbilical cord but what they found was an eldritch concept of death so inconceivable that it resulted in the obliteration of their minds but beware secrets are secrets for a reason and some do not wish to see them uncovered especially when the secrets are particularly unseemly simon the harrod [Music] chapter 8 nikolas the blood moon the dreamlands and the great ones a hunter is a hunter even in a dream but alas not too fast the nightmare swirls and churns unending miklash host of the night man if there's anyone in bloodborne that we can safely ascribe the quality of bad guy too it's probably mykolash the great ones are too complex and too alien in their existence to ascribe moral values of good or bad to them willem very likely tried his hardest to prevent the events of bloodborne from occurring in the first place the beasts are no longer thinking creatures janam is portrayed as being a tragic figure the victim of circumstances beyond her control an elise defied the church and tried to steer her people into a new age of prosperity lawrence and german tried to control the scourge ludwig tried to establish an organization that would protect the innocent eileen only kills hunters who have succumbed to bloodlust the abhorrent beast can't help the fact that he's been so horribly afflicted with the scourge and his dialogue is almost heart-wrenching as you can see how terrible his condition is maria genuinely cared for the patience of the research hall and was racked with guilt at her actions in the hamlet patches is mischievous but amicable the false yosefka is desperately trying to finish research which she believes will uplift and save humanity alfred simply wants to let legarius rest in peace jura just wants to protect old yharnam and gascoigne is slaying what he believes are monsters mikalash on the other hand is bat crazy and he seems to be perfectly happy with that fact mikulash's existence seems to be in itself a laugh at the player by the developers we've journeyed so far faced so much and struggled so painfully in our search for answers when we finally encounter someone who could explain to us what the hell is going on he's stark raving mad it's almost as if the developers are taunting us you're sure you want the answers he knows the truth look what good it did him but before we get to mikalash's status as being host of the nightmare and the implications that holds let's go back to the beginning and take a look at mikalash and his school of mensis everything started at birgenworth a group of scholars discovered existence of the great ones and the incredible power of the old blood this would lead to an inevitable separation as differences in ideology led to a group of the bergenworth scholars leaving the academy to found the healing church mikulash was one such scholar in our fight against him we see mikalash wearing the tattered uniform of a bergenworth scholar the description of the students uniform reads uniform of the students of byrgenwerth a bygone institute of learning the healing church has its roots in byrgenwerth and naturally borrows heavily from its uniform design the focus not on knowledge or thought but on pure pretension would surely bring master willem to despair if only he knew in the early days of the healing church the group operated mostly in secret gammon's workshop would serve as a secret police force for the church while mikulash would found the school of menses a new institution of learning for the church to continue the research at byrgenwerth according to the upper cathedral key the upper echelons of the healing church are formed by the school of mensis based in the unseen village and the choir occupying the upper cathedral ward the key is found in the aragool on the corpse of an imprisoned choir member from their new secret location in yaragul mikalash's new school of mensis would be protected and hidden by the healing church the aragool attire tells us the hunters of yaraghul answer to the village's founders the school of mensis hunters in name only these kidnappers blend into the night wearing this attire from their hidden conclave servants of the school of mensis would skulk out into the night and kidnap innocents to drag them back to yaraghul for their experiments the pc hunter can be one such kidnapped victim if they die to a kidnapper an enemy that first make their appearance after the death of the bloodstarved beast the hunter also encounters and fights two yara ghoul hunters lurking outside of a home in the cathedral ward possibly searching for more victims it would seem however that the school of menses slowly drifted apart from the healing church while yanamites venerate the old blood and pay homage to the great ones as being godlike figures the citizens of yara ghoul worship the great ones directly statues of the twisted figures line the streets and enormous chapels are devoted to the worship of spider-like great ones furthermore the rituals of the school of menses seem to be either directly or indirectly responsible for the coming of the blood moon but what is the blood moon mad men toil surreptitiously in rituals to beckon the moon uncover their secrets note left by a dead hunter the mensis ritual must be stopped lest we all become beasts note left by a dead hunter when the red moon hangs low the line between man and beast is blurred note found in bergenworth mansion the red moon hangs low and beasts ruled the streets note left by jura behold a pale blood sky unknown author the player first encounters the blood moon after the death of rom the vacuous spider the pc hunter discovers queen yarnam at the bottom of the moonside lake seemingly having appeared from nowhere she weeps as she stares at the sky and as the hunter follows her gaze they see the overwhelming blood moon looming above them after that everything changes this is the moment when bloodborne goes from being a tale of beasts and blood to a tale of horrible eldritch things that work behind the scenes or perhaps a better way to explain it would be that it was always a story of eldritch things only we couldn't see them many players walk out of odin chapel for the first time to the sound of a loud hissing vacuum-like noise coming from behind them they turn and stare at the peculiar wisp of air that seems to flow through some of them as i did walk closer to learn more it is then that the hunter is hoisted into the air by unseen forces crushed to death and succumbing to frenzy if you're like me you moved on with the hunt you chalked it up to just another miyazaki death trap what killed you was an amygdala or at least what i will refer to as an amygdala it's not clear if the amygdala that serves as the boss of the nightmare frontier is the great one's name or its species however the amygdalin arm labels it as an arm of a small amygdala great one and the term great one is too broad and so i refer to these creatures as the amigdale once the hunter slays rom and the blood moon rises the amigdale are no longer hidden in fact it becomes painfully clear that they've been there all along and this brings us to the dreamlands many players indeed i would say the majority of players are naturally confused by the words nightmare and dream that repeat in bloodborne most people haven't read the works of lovecraft from which the bloodborne series takes its influence even those who have read lovecraft typically only read his later and admittedly much better written works such as shadow over innsmouth and the call of cthulhu however towards the middle of lovecraft's career we have what lovecraft scholars refer to as the dream cycle for lovecraft the act of dreaming was a method in which human beings could briefly transport their consciousness to an alternate dimension the dreamlands are not an illusion they are a real place the dreamlands are a location just like janam bergenworth cainhurst or yara ghoul the mere fact that the player can take items from the dreamlands and bring them back to the waking world is proof that it's a place equally real the lead elixirs description states its recipe for this mysterious concoction is unknown but some postulate that it materializes only within the most desperate nightmare there are four distinctly different locations in the dreamlands that the pc hunter travels to the nightmare frontier the lecture hall the hunter's nightmare and the hunter's dream the hunter's dream is the first place in the dreamlands the hunter travels to and from here it is where they will travel to different parts of the game's world the lecture hall is the next location the hunter travels to the lecture hall of byrgenwerth has been somehow warped and transported into the dreamlands the lecture hall is connected to the nightmare which consists of both the nightmare of menses and the nightmare frontier and judging from the fact that a church giant is found in the upper levels it's possible that the school of menses moved into the nightmare lecture hall at some point in time notice that when the hunter opens certain doors in the lecture hall and transports to the nightmare the same warping effects and particles occur as when the hunter uses a lamp the dreamlands are a location that exists parallel to our own world they have a landscape just like we do only they play by slightly different rules teleportation is just another method of transportation in the dreamlands the dreamlands exist directly parallel to our own waking world while the waking world is the domain of humanity the dreamlands are the lands of the great ones these two worlds exist like a reflection of one another the nightmare frontier appears to be a reflection of the ravaged thumerian land of loran as evidenced by the fact that silver beasts wander the frontier and that amigdala drops the ailing laran chalice the hunter's nightmare appears to be a reflection of the city of vianam itself the hunter's dream is obviously gammon's abandoned workshop they are places so very similar to their locations in the waking world only slightly different consider staring into the mirror watching your reflection you stare at it for an hour and for the very briefest of moments you see a figure standing behind you in your reflection whipping your head around startled you see that nothing is there looking back at your reflection the figure is gone what you've just seen is a tiny little rip in the veil that separates the two worlds the waking world and the dreamlands the figure is of course still standing behind you it exists on a plane of reality parallel to your own above yours maybe the figure was curious about you wanted to learn more and in showing interest made itself visible for just the slightest of moments behold a pale blood sky this message can be found prior to rom's death rather confusingly if we look up at the sky nothing is out of the ordinary the message is still there however after rom's death looking at the sky reveals the blood moon in all its splendor of course the message was there before because the blood moon was always there we just couldn't see it this is what insight allows us to do with forty insight the hunter will be able to see the army daley in the cathedral ward even before the death of rom with 50 insight the theme music of the hunter's dream will change to the theme that plays in the hunter's dream after rom's death even before rome's death with 60 insight the hunter will be able to hear the crying baby when standing next to ariana even before the death of rom there is a theme here insight allows us to glimpse into the realm parallel to our own and see what lies beyond humanity's perception after the death of rom the veil that separates the worlds collapses completely inside is no longer necessary the blood moon rises the army daley are visible and the crying infant is heard constantly the citizens of janam are driven insane once they are forcibly made to understand the depths of their reality simply looking upon the great ones is enough to drive someone insane let alone the twisted knowledge that they lurked above you all your life always watching you but where does it fit together how does mikalash beckon the blood moon why is he in the nightmare why is he the host the school of mensis was founded to continue the study of the great ones that began at byrgenwerth mikulash reported to lawrence and the healing church and in return they kept the existence of the school a secret after the purge of old yharnam secrecy was no longer necessary and the choir was formed to study the old blood of the great ones and ebritus early on mykolash and the choir cooperated as evidenced by the orga of the british that mikalash wields however mikalash's experiments and the rituals of the school of mensis slowly grew more twisted mikulash began to kidnap hunters likely to ludwig's displeasure even the corpse of a choir member is found chained and imprisoned inside of yarakul suggesting that mikulash and the menses students were growing emboldened by their closing nearer to the eldritch truth in response to this the choir would send a man named edgar to infiltrate the school of mensis and discover what was going on implying that the school had begun hiding their research from the choir we know very little about edgar he is found in the nightmare of mensis and wears a student uniform wielding a holy blade and ros marinus the official guide simply names him as edgar choir intelligence edgar travelled into the school of mensis to find that the students now worshiped the great ones as literal gods the amigdale in particular the motivations of the amigdale are unknown it's clear that the godlike beings could likely send yanum toppling to the ground if they wished the weapons of mortals pale in comparison to the great ones it's odd really how they seem so idle and passive as they watch the humans walk by sometimes reaching down in curiosity to grasp at one amigdale only appear in places of worship one is found wrapped around the odin chapel another in the abandoned church that served as a gateway to yara ghoul the amigdala the player fights is located in what appears to be a large cathedral where the ancient thumerians likely worshipped the great ones consider the moon runes description a transcription of moon as spoken by the great ones inhabiting the nightmare the great ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit and often answer when called upon [Music] perhaps that explains why the army daley which live in the nightmare congregate around places of worship maybe they listen to the hopes and prayers of human beings in yara ghoul however the amigdale are everywhere as mikulash and the school of mensis grew closer to the eldritch truth they attracted more and more of the great ones like a flame attracting moths their final ritual however would be their undoing somehow mikulash came into the possession of one of the umbilical cords of the great ones murgo's umbilical cord to be specific here was all the evidence they needed the cord of a true great one murgo child of janam and odin with the results of their research and the cord of the eye of their disposal mikulash and the menses students would attempt to ascend to the status of godhood just as rom and willem had done with the orphan's chord mikulash would line his brain with eyes the chord's description reads every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate this chord granted menses audience with mergo but resulted in the stillbirth of their brains murgo was dead indeed mogo had died in stillbirth millennia ago in ancient thumeru it's not exactly clear what it would mean for a great one to be dead if they can even die in the first place when the school of mensis communed with the dead great one it was the end of yara ghoul the veil between worlds was ripped apart bell ringers brought the dead to life the citizens fleeing the carnage were frozen in stone permanently affixed to the walls they so desperately tried to climb to freedom the many caskets that lined the streets burst open body parts coagulating together into masses of meat and bone that clung together and attacked the kidnappers murdering them mensis was dragged into the nightmare ripped open and all of his students were dead but their consciousnesses were pulled into the nightmare very few would survive this transition the only two we know of being mikalash and edgar mikulash was brought to the dreamlands specifically the nightmare edgar likely survived due to the fact that he was not wearing a menses cage and likely did not participate in the ritual while mikalash is a bit of a special case mikalash's corpse still located in yaragul provided a gateway just as the many lamps around yharnam provide gates to the hunter's dream mikulash's corpse the host of the nightmare would provide a gateway to the nightmare the nightmare as we have discussed appears to be a reflection of the thumerian city loren if that is the case perhaps lorann was the place of murgo's attempted birth at the top of murgo's loft the castle upon which the hunter ascends we find queen yarnam weeping by following her gaze we ascend to the top of the castle and there we fight mergo's wetness historically a wet nurse was typically a woman who would breastfeed an infant child if the mother for whatever reason was unable to while fighting her the lullaby of murgo a haunting melody plays throughout the area perhaps the wet nurse was a great one summoned by janam to care for her future child or perhaps the wet nurse was created as some kind of manifestation of mergo's consciousness either way the wet nurse is a fully formed great one she bleeds red just as the amigdale the orphan and the moon presence do instead of the clear fluid that the kin bleed she is the dominant force ruling over the nightmare from atop murgo's loft and something peculiar occurs upon slaying her in the english version of bloodborne the blue text prey slaughtered accompanies a victorious boss fight in the japanese version it's the blue text you hunted but in both versions killing murgo's wetness causes the red text nightmare slain to appear on the screen i was rather confused when i first saw this consider bloodborne's tagline hunt your nightmares let's pause for a moment and look at the four fully fledged great ones that the hunter encounters the wetness amigdala the orphan and the moon presence of the four amigdala is the only one who does not grant the nightmare slain message the wetness the orphan and the moon presence are the only three enemies in the game who make that message appear this puzzled me for a very very long time until i came to a rather simple conclusion amigdala isn't dead even after killing the one in the nightmare frontier the other amigdale still remain the hunter even kills another amygdala in the thumerian labyrinth perhaps the amigdale aren't individual members of a single species after all but a single great one after all patches speaks to the amygdala that grabs you in the cathedral ward as if it is amygdala itself i only had this revelation after re-fighting murgo's wet nurse in new game plus and realizing that she appears to create a perfect clone of herself using it to fight me the great ones exist on a level far beyond our comprehension who is to say they can't be in multiple places at once in the depths of the great is the hunter even fights ebritus for a second time who appears to have been there all along whatever the mystery behind the nightmare slain message slaying the wetness ends murgo's consciousness and puts the mensis rituals to an end however the ritual had not been an entire failure the ascension had worked more or less a new great one was born from the still-birthed minds of the menses students the brain of mensis the living string tells us the immense brain that mensis retrieved from the nightmare was indeed lined with eyes on the inside but they were of an evil sort and the brain itself was terribly rotten but even still it was a legitimate great one and left a relic a living relic at that which is a precious thing indeed the brain of mensis is a helpless great one whose only real strength is the madness it causes by looking upon it the brain of mensis is suspended in mergo's loft acting as a living weapon that attacks on comers if the hunter finds their way down to a lever accessible by fighting past the winter lanterns they can release the chains on the brain of menses and send it hurtling into the abyss working back down to the base of margot's loft they will find a new elevator which brings them down to the fallen helpless great one it was kind of sad really when i first encountered the brain of mensis twitching there a mass of brain and eyes that watched me walking back and forth i wasn't really sure what to do with it should i kill it it certainly wasn't aggressive it was simply laying there and had no way of fighting back i decided to do what had become a bit of a habit for me whenever i encountered something having to do with the great ones i put on the menses cage and performed the make contact gesture the menses cage is described as this hexagonal iron cage suggests their strange ways the cage is a device that restrains the will of the self allowing one to see the profane world for what it is it also serves as an antenna that facilitates contact with the great ones of the dream but to an observer the iron cage appears to be precisely what delivered them to their harrowing nightmare i had learned early that the doll would respond to gestures leading me to believe there were others that would as well just like everyone else i was hoping to find some kind of secret somewhere so far i have been thoroughly unsuccessful no matter where i wore the menses cage or to whom i performed make contact nothing had happened so i sat there like an idiot i told myself as my hunter stood in front of the brain of menses with his arms outstretched i knew from experience that eventually the hunter would change positions as i had taken to waiting for that moment before moving on with whatever i was doing to my complete and utter surprise an item appeared in my inventory it was a moon rune the most powerful one i had encountered the great ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit and often answer when called upon it was a moment that legitimately made me feel bad about this thing in front of me i decided to kill it maybe the fact that it gave me a moon rune a rune that grants more blood echoes upon killing enemies was some kind of cry for an end to its misery i was rewarded with the living string an item i had been looking for idly for quite some time as it was needed to access thumerui hill later i would read online that the menses cage was unnecessary and one simply had to perform make contact to my surprise i would read that nobody had discovered any use for the menses cage whatsoever nothing really not a single secret unlocked with such an item that seems so obviously placed to unlock a secret maybe the cage doesn't do anything at all maybe in their madness the delusions of the mensis students convinced them it worked even though it wasn't necessary their madness after all would deliver them to their harrowing nightmare grant us eyes grant us eyes plant eyes on our brains to cleanse our beastly idiocy make a lash host of the nightmare chapter 9 lawrence german and the hunters mark seek the old blood let us pray let us wish let us partake in communion and feast upon the old blood our thirst for blood satiates us soothes our fears seek the old blood but beware the frailty of men their wills are weak minds young the foul beasts will dangle nectar and lure the meek into the depths remain wary of the frailty of men their wills are weak minds young were it not for fear death would go unlamented vicar emilia lawrence and german together they would change the world who were they originally and how did they fall from grace what happened to lawrence and how was gaiman bound to the hunter's dream when we see now what their organization has become we can only wonder what these two individuals dreamed of do they want a better world did they want personal power perhaps they were simply mad men chasing after scientific curiosity and slaughtering the innocent in their path in this penultimate chapter we will examine the fates of these two individuals and the consequences of their actions the pc hunter awakens into a world of horror just as the player does they have no answers they have no real questions to even ask the world is confusing frightening and punishing indeed if the hunter had been alone they likely never would have gotten much of anywhere but the hunter isn't alone you must be the new hunter welcome to the hunter's dream this will be your home for now i am gammon friend to you hunters you're sure to be in a fine haze about now but don't think too hard about all of this just go out and kill a few beasts it's for your own good you know it's just what hunters do you'll get used to it german the first hunter gammon provides the hunter with a home and a workshop from within the hunter's dream german will provide the hunter with a bit of comfort and a small amount of guidance but who is german where does he come from and why is he here according to the plain doll he was a hunter long long ago but now serves only to advise them he is obscure unseen in the dreaming world still he stays here in this dream such as his purpose gaiman was the first hunter and from him all modern hunting techniques were developed the central theme of german is mercy what he grants to those he kills in the hunter's dream as implied by his burial blade trick weapon wielded by gammon the first hunter a masterpiece that defined the entire array of weapons crafted at the workshop its blade is forged with ciderite said to have fallen from the heavens german surely saw the hunt as a dirge of farewell wishing only that his prey might rest in peace never again to awaken to another harrowing nightmare he also created the plain doll basing its appearance upon his dead protege maria from within the hunter's dream german and the doll guide the pale blood hunters in their work german was also as we know an acquaintance of lawrence oh lawrence what's taking you so long i've grown too old for this of little use now i'm afraid our first encounter with lawrence comes from discovering his skull in the grand cathedral after defeating vicar emilia here we witness a memory in which lawrence announced to master willem that he was leaving bergenworth we learn from lawrence's skull found in the nightmare that it is the skull of lawrence first vicar of the healing church in reality he became the first cleric beast and his human skull only exists within the nightmare the skull is a symbol of lawrence's past and what he failed to protect he is destined to seek his skull but even if he found it it could never restore his memories the human skull appears to be a purely symbolic object created in the nightmare as laurence's skull in the waking world is found in the grand cathedral in miyazaki's interview with future press he remarks that lawrence's skull served as the start of the healing church itself but it's taken the form of a twisted beast lawrence was therefore the founder of the healing church having left bergenworth after a disagreement in philosophy with master willem lawrence and gaiman represent two halves of a mystery but what happened to them how did things become the way they are when we enter the game lawrence was the first vicar german the first hunter their story like much in bloodborne begins at byrgenwerth we have already established that german was an associate of both lawrence and master willem german may have been a student at byrgenwerth or judging by his combat proficiency and craftsmanship may have been the academy's handyman groundskeeper or a bodyguard but upon the discovery of the old blood lawrence would lead a section of the bergenworth scholars informing the healing church separating from birgenworth german lawrence's closest friend would join him lawrence and gaiman both believed that humanity could achieve its next evolution through the use of the old blood as written in the metamorphosis rune the discovery of blood made their dream of evolution a reality metamorphosis and the excesses and deviation that followed was only the beginning it was however at this time that lawrence and gaiman came to a horrible discovery while the old blood could indeed cure any disease those who had been ministered were susceptible to falling under a new terrible illness known only as the scourge of the beast those who had succumbed to the tainted blood suffered from a form of lycanthropy their hair elongated their teeth sharpened their size and strength increased and they became violent and irrational the men and women who had succumbed to the scourge became beasts but lawrence could not stop his research sacrifices would need to be made all who followed willem's footsteps knew that evolution required courage a note found in the nightmare lecture hall reads master willem was right evolution without courage will be the ruin of our race and so lawrence's work would continue while lawrence formed the church german formed the workshop a secret institution the workshop would train a group of individuals to hunt and slaughter beasts the hunter attire tells us it is a fine piece of hunter attire that provides stable defense to anyone facing yharnam's beastly threat allows one to stalk beasts unannounced by cover of night the workshop acted as a secret cleanup crew for lawrence's budding church they would hunt down those who had turned and execute them before panic could spread throughout yanum it's possible that lawrence and german knowledgeable of the great ones that they were also discovered the terrible nature of the blood moon and the source of the scourge as being the pale blood moon presence they tried to find a way to defeat the moon presence an antibody that would be too strong for it some way to control the scourge of the beast they were unsuccessful lawrence and german grew older the workshop was sealed away and gaiman became prisoner of the moon presence in his attempt to free his closest friend lawrence pushed his research to the limits the scourge had to be contained no matter the cost ashen blood was introduced to old janam and the research intensified the beasts were studied by lawrence and his church even while corpses piled in the streets and the city was covered in blood lawrence's countless experiments resulted in a breakthrough the culmination of all of his research to put an end to the scourge of the beast and control it for good the beasts embrace after the repeated experiments in controlling the scourge of beasts the gentle embrace rune was discovered when its implementation failed the embrace became a forbidden rune but its knowledge became a foundation of the healing church in the grand cathedral of the healing church the first vicar committed the embrace to memory the oath rune burned into his mind with this he would take control over the scourge put an end to the hunts master the old blood guide humanity to the next stage of evolution and free his best friend from the control of the great ones this is what everything had been for all the dead victims all the unspeakable crimes leaving bergenworth exploring the labyrinth founding the healing church everything in his life had been for this everything led to this one moment for this it would all be worth it but it was not to be the skull is a symbol of lawrence's past and what he failed to protect on that day the healing church changed forever lawrence became the first cleric beast a creature the likes of which the healing church had never encountered this was not simply a person who had grown fangs and hair this was a true monster it's possible that it was the church assassin bredor who found lawrence first bredore's testimony the scalp of a cleric beast tells us the scalp of a horrid cleric beast indicating that hunter bredor a healing church assassin had killed a compatriot afterward he wore his ally's own scalp and hid himself away deep below in a cell the church provided him with a single soundless bell of death to ensure their secrets would be kept bradau slew lawrence and in doing so was driven mad he skinned the corpse splattered his clothes with the blood of the fallen vicar severed the head from the body and scalped it when he was found he was drenched with blood and gore and his blood letter was steeped in frenzy nothing changes such is the nature of man and his testimony to the failure of the healing church were locked away any and all research into controlling the scourge of the beast was immediately stopped and deemed forbidden the claw mark and beast runes along with the beast blood pellets were all black marked by the healing church with lawrence's death the healing church had formed one of the pillars of its philosophy beware the frailty of men the scourge cannot be controlled it must be destroyed as for lawrence his consciousness was pulled into the nightmare perhaps he was cursed to burn for all eternity as punishment for the flames that covered old yharnam a brilliant mind lost to madness and so now we have the first half of our picture but what of german while german hadn't been affected as deeply by the events of the hamlet massacre as maria had been it had still disturbed him he too was subject to the curse of the cause parasites and had terrible dreams because of it upon defeating the orphan the doll notes that gammon is sleeping strangely soundly for he normally has difficulty sleeping even so gammon aided lawrence in the founding of the healing church and established the workshop training the first hunters in the art of slaying beasts but while german hadn't been as distraught by the hamlet massacre the death of maria destroyed him according to maria's hunter garb german had a curious mania in regards to her that she was unaware of maria greatly admired gaiman but it's unclear if the master and student shared a romantic relationship or whether german's affection for her was purely one-sided whatever the case her death ruined him after defeating maria in the astral clock tower we find her coffin placed directly behind her chair resting atop the coffin lid are cold blood flowers the same as the ones found in german's garden in the hunter's dream spiraling into depression after the death of his greatest pupil gemman sealed his workshop away and withdrew from the world into his isolation in his growing madness german made a doll the master craftsman that he was the doll was made with exquisite perfection the small hair ornament tells us although it has been lost for quite some time one can still see signs of the care with which this tasteful ornament was once kept this indicates that german held on to his only memento of maria treasuring it designing his doll off of her terribly lonely and terribly miserable he wanted nothing more than to have maria back it was then that something took notice of poor germans mania for as the moon rune reminds us the great ones are sympathetic in spirit to have his beloved maria back he would give anything so it was that german was bound to the dream and the hunter's mark branded in his mind dangling upside down rune etched in one's mind symbol of a hunter what is the hunter's mark in terms of gameplay significance it functions as the nexial binding from demon souls or the dark sign from dark souls but what is it really its description calls it arun but we do not commit it to memory like we do with the carol runes runes are as far as we know utterings of the great ones etched into symbols runesmith carol could commune with the great ones and listen to their mutterings but she could find no words to describe them instead carol could only find symbols that represented these utterings comprehensible to human minds if we think of these symbols as representing words of a language we can therefore conclude that the hunter's mark is quite literally the great one word for hunter as the same symbol is found on carol's own hunter rune the uttering of a great one etched into one's mind the symbol of a hunter hunter this word branded into one's mind is what makes someone a hunter and not just any hunter but a special hunter a pale blood hunter one bound to the dreamlands this rune is what makes someone immortal cursed to hunt and hunt and hunt until they are freed we as players have this mark branded into our minds no matter how many times we die we wake up again even if we fall off a cliff we're cut in half we're burned to death we're killed by frenzy crushed by a monster we die and die and die and die and even still we wake up once more even if we kill ourselves with the sugar g or the wheel or the whistle or the bloodletter we wake up once more there's only one way out for someone branded with the hunter's mark to die by the hand of another branded hunter as german settled into his new place in the hunter's dream he found himself shackled and chained there was no escape for gaiman the first hunter trapped in a living hell unable to die unable to be granted mercy gaiman guided other pale blood hunters when their hunts were over german would end their life freeing them from the wretched torturous existence of eternal life he granted them mercy but where is the hunter's mark coming from as the player receives their first blood transfusion they are attacked by a beast but the beast turns to flames and the messengers arrive crawling over the player at that point something took notice of the player something peered over them and spoke a single word hunter with that uttering they were reborn their life before the transfusion was irrelevant they were now a weapon they awaken into a new world a new nightmare they awaken into the hunt chapter 10 the pale blood hunt now let's begin the transfusion oh don't you worry whatever happens you may think it all a mere bad tree blood minister normally this is the part where i would tell you i'm going to use nothing but facts and evidence and save all of my speculation until the very end but we can't really do that in this part can we instead consider all of my previous writing to be the evidence we've gathered i'll try to be as factual as possible and i will certainly try to leave as much of my speculation out as i can but for the purposes of this analysis consider this last chapter to be purely my interpretation of the impossibly complex ending to bloodborne use it for whatever you will accept it as fact dismiss it as nonsense or use it as the foundation for your own theories i do however ask that you listen to the end before choosing to comment as this final chapter is the most confusing and the most speculative of my essay whatever you choose to do use your mind to think master willem would remind you that relying purely on pretension leads only to despair the moon presence the secret final boss of bloodborne of all significant beings and events in bloodborne this is the most mysterious the moon presence has caused many players to leave bloodborne with a feeling of discomfort as if they came so close to the truth and yet were still so far away a hunter encounters the moon presence if they refuse gammon's offer of mercy and defeat him the moon presence descends from the blood moon itself even its name implies a deep connection to the blood moon as we know the blood moon rises whenever the line between man and beast is blurred when humans succumb to the scourge of the beast the blood moon rises or perhaps it's the other way around perhaps it's the blood moon that rises causing those infected with the scourge to transform into beasts at the beginning of the game we find a note in the back of the hunter's dream presumably left for the hunter to escape this dreadful hunter's dream hold the source of the spreading scourge of beasts lest the night carry on forever now recall gammon's words to the hunter after the defeat of father gascoigne the moon is close it will be a long hunt tonight the blood moon or rather the moon presence is the source of the scourge the beast exists within humanity it always has the bergenworth scholar carol was the first to discover this during her commune with the great ones according to the claw mark rune the claw mark is an impulse to seek the warmth of blood like a beast it strengthens visceral attacks one of the darker hunter techniques although the difference is subtle runesmith carol describes the beast as a horrific and unwelcome instinct deep within the hearts of men while claw mark is an alluring invitation to accept this very nature but it wouldn't be until the work of a mysterious figure known as the irreverent izzy that carol's theories would be put into practice his weapon of choice the beast claw states as flesh is flayed and blood is sprayed the beast within awakens and in time the wielder of this weapon surges with both strength and feverish revery but while izzy's claw is telling it is the tool he designed known as the beast roar which is the most haunting borrow the strength of the terrible undead dark beasts if only for a moment to blast surrounding foes back with the force of a roaring beast the in indescribable sound is broadcast with the caster's own vocal cords which begs the question what terrible things lurk deep within the frames of men the potential for evolution exists within humanity but whether they will ascend to gods or descend to beasts is unclear if the moon presence the blood moon made flesh is indeed the source of the scourge then it can mean one of two things the first possibility is likely the most outlandish and controversial that being that the moon presence is the source of humanity which in itself contains the scourge of the beast the second and i believe more likely scenario is that while the beast lies within all of humanity it is not unless they are tainted by the old blood that they become susceptible to corruption and the beast takes over it is when the blood moon draws closer that those who have been infected with the scourge will succumb to their inner terrible nature and become monsters but why what does the moon presence want let's take a brief moment to look at the very bare bones of bloodborne the bare minimum that the player can accomplish in order to beat the game let's strip out absolutely everything optional and give only the basic necessary conditions in order to complete the hunt first the hunter awakens at yosefka's clinic and travels to the healing church along the way they defeat father gascoigne a hunter who has succumbed to the scourge once at the grand cathedral of the healing church the hunter defeats vicar emilia the former head of the cathedral once emilia is defeated the hunter learns the password which will grant access to bergenworth the source of the old blood's discovery with the password in hand the hunter travels to birgenworth along the way defeating the shadows of yharnam once at byrgenwerth the hunter discovers rahm the vacuous spider and slays her with rom's death the gate to yara ghoul is pried open and the hunter travels into the unseen village the hunter defeats the one reborn and locates the corpse of mikalash using his body as a gateway to access the nightmare in the nightmare the hunter ascends murgo's loft defeating mikalash's consciousness along the way before coming to the final boss of the game murgo's wetness a fully formed great one the wet nurse is a vicious enemy who rules over the loft and has claimed this section of the dreamlands as her own upon the defeat of the wet nurse and the silence of the nightmare newborn's harrowing cry the haunting words nightmare slain blanket the screen with the wet nurse's defeat the hunter returns to the hunter's dream to find the workshop burned to the ground the doll instructs the hunter to meet with german who meets them underneath an ancient tree there german congratulates the hunter on a job well done good hunter you've done well the night is near its end now i will show you mercy you will die forget the dream and awake under the morning sun you will be freed from this terrible hunter's dream the hunter turns and kneels before gammon who rises from his chair for the first time and executes the hunter the hunter awakens from that terrible dream weary and weakened as the sun rises over yharnam the credits roll when described in this way bloodborne seems to be a very linear very simple game doesn't it german tasks the hunter with killing murgo in order to do this they must get to the nightmare in order to get to the nightmare they need to get to yara ghoul in order to get to yara ghoul they need to get to bergenworth in order to get to birgenworth they need to get to the healing church getting to the healing church is the first objective the hunter makes for themselves upon their initial meeting with gilbert what does the moon presence want it's quite simple really it wants to kill merger and uses german to guide the hunter into doing it the moon presence the orphan and the wetness are the only three fully formed great ones that the hunter encounters while the hunter encounters the amygdala as we've discussed previously it's not entirely clear if the hunter ever truly fights or experiences the army daley as they or rather it truly is the great ones beings of the dreamlands have their own motivations and their own goals they are not allied with one another just as all humans are not allied with one another when the red moon hangs low the line between man and beast is blurred and when the great ones descend a womb will be blessed with child note found in the bergenworth mansion this note is our first real indication that there is something far far greater than just a hunt at stake in yharnam the phrasing of the note is interesting however as it describes a correlation the red moon hangs low and the line between man and beast is blurred the great ones descend and a womb is blessed with child the order of the sentences make it seem as if first the blood moon rises and then the great ones descend but the note doesn't explicitly state that causality instead what if it's the other way around what if the great ones descend a womb is blessed with child and in response the blood moon rises and the line between man and beast is blurred for what purpose does the blood moon rise why is a hunter chosen to be bound to the dream seek the nightmare newborn this message appears rather strikingly directly after rom has died and the blood moon has risen there is no source for the message it is not spoken aloud nor is it given in the form of a note it simply appears in the mind of the hunter a message and an instruction every great one loses its child but why does every great one lose its child perhaps this is what the moon presence desires the death of infant great ones using the pale blood hunters to accomplish this feat while the great ones motivations and reasons for acting are far too inhuman for us to understand they do have a very understandable goal the most apparent goal they just as every living creature before them have is to reproduce every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate the order of the sentence structure here is important it is not as one would think which is that the great ones yearn for a surrogate that is to say a human mother to give birth to their child and then lose their child as a result this is most certainly what happens but it is not their goal instead every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate it is evidently very very difficult for new great ones to be born murgo died in stillbirth the orphan never even had the chance to be born and the brain of mensis was born deformed rotten and helpless something always goes wrong with the birth of a great one and so the great ones find replacements for their lost children we already know that this is not the first hunt and that the hunter is not the first in the hunter's dream there have been those before the hunter who have come the blood moon has risen in the past and the moon presence has guided hunters into completing its objectives through the use of gammon its surrogate child the two hunters who we know went through this cycle were jura the retired hunter and eileen the crow jura seems to remember little of the dream only recalling it faintly i no longer dream but i was once a hunter too eileen however remembers much of it if the hunter attacks and dies to eileen the crow she will chillingly ask the player you still have dreams tell the little doll i said hello think of how we experience dreams upon freshly waking up we remember it vividly especially if it was a nightmare as the day progresses details become fuzzier and eventually we can't remember the contents of the dream at all only that we had one indeed those who gammon executes in the hunter's dream awaken and slowly forget the details of their terrible terrible nightmare but they don't have to accept it if the hunter refuses german's offer of mercy they do battle against him it is the master and the student the parent and child battling so that the former can be freed and the latter can overcome with german the moon presence's surrogate child defeated the moon presence descends look at the way it curls around the hunter almost protectively it lovingly embraces the hunter as a parent would a child the screen fades to black and we find the doll pushing gammon's wheelchair however it is not gammon sitting on the chair but the hunter and as the credits roll we hear the doll utter and so the hunt begins again the hunter has taken gammon's place as the surrogate child but this is not the only option the cycle does not need to continue the hunt can be transcended seek pale blood to transcend the hunt it's a handwritten note found in the very first room in the game the room in which the hunter awakens in yosefka's clinic as evidenced by the foreign garb the hunter is wearing upon their awakening the hunter remembers nothing prior to their transfusion not typical clothing for yanum perhaps it is a foreign origin it is said after all the traveler came to yhanam from afar without memory who will ever know without memory the hunter discovers this note and naturally the player forms a goal in their mind seek pale blood to transcend the hunt but what is pale blood the hunter apparently asks gilbert this very question to which he responds pale blood you say hmm never heard of it but if it's blood you're interested in you should try the healing church gilbert himself admits he isn't very knowledgeable on blood ministration and directs you to try the church the healing church however has absolutely no record anywhere of pale blood other than the conversation with gilbert there are only four references to pale blood anywhere in the entire game the first reference is the note found at the beginning the second reference is a note by an unknown author found in yara ghoul behold a pale blood sky the note is pointed towards the moon and if encountered prior to the death of rom is fairly confusing a after rom's death when the blood moon rises and the sky twists into a nightmare the note makes much much more sense the color of the sky after you defeat the vacuous spider and the mensis secret ritual is revealed the sky there is a very pale blue like a body drained of blood this quote from miyazaki discusses the sky that has been revealed once the veil between the waking world and the dreamlands has been torn apart the third reference to pale blood is found in the nightmare lecture hall as part of a series of notes the nameless moon presence beckoned by lawrence and his associates pale blood in miyazaki's interview he murmurs that that's another interpretation pale blood is another name for the monster that comes from the moon the moon presence the pale blood great one but as miyazaki notes there is more than one interpretation for pale blood pale blood is not a single concept but an overarching theme of bloodborne there is another reference to pale blood in the game one that some players probably forget as it occurs so early in the game oh yeah pale blood well you've come to the right place janam is the home of blood administration you need only unravel its mystery blood minister it's the very first sentence uttered in the entire game by the doctor who administers the hunter's first blood transfusion this doctor is credited simply as the blood minister let's take a moment to pause in our analysis of bloodborne and instead go over something very very simple what is blood i am not a doctor nor will i pretend to be as such i am likely vastly oversimplifying things so take my explanation with a grain of salt blood consists of three distinct ingredients first are erythrocytes typically referred to as red blood cells red blood cells travel through the body of a human being and distribute oxygen to the body's tissues red blood cells are the primary means of life support and nutrition second is plasma approximately half of blood is plasma a liquid that serves as a means of transportation for the blood cells which carry out their task in supporting the human body when blood is centrifuged to separate the ingredients we find something very interesting about plasma plasma that has been separated from clotting proteins and blood cells is actually an amber light yellow color this liquid is referred to as serum or sometimes pure blood as it is the liquid blood in itself without any other ingredients the third ingredient of blood are the leukocytes or white blood cells white blood cells exist as part of the human body's immune system they attack infectious invaders foreign substances and clean up after old and dead cell structures blood is such a central theme in bloodborne everything revolves around it even the title especially the title blood borne a bloodborne pathogen a disease of the blood this is what the scourge of the beast is it's an infection a disease that spreads from person to person through the transfusion of blood master willem sternly reminds lawrence that we are born of the blood made men by the blood undone by the blood the scourge infects the victim by attacking and tainting their blood corrupting them now look at the kin ascended mortals who have become kin of the cosmos they have escaped the taint of the scourge moving past it indeed they bleed a clear amber liquid serum to be exact the kin of the cosmos have cleansed their blood of the tainted scourge separating it from the other ingredients and becoming purer beings and finally we have white blood cells pale blood cells the white blood cells are the body's defense system they seek out the infection and destroy it but it's the way they destroy infections that fascinates me so white blood cells grow and consume the infection bringing it within themselves and isolating it in such a manner the parallels to the pc hunter are striking seek pale blood to transcend the hunt maybe this isn't a note for the player at all maybe it's a note for the blood minister jarrah likely suffered from a terrible incurable disease it's possible that he suffered from a type of terminal anemia meaning that he had a significant deficiency of iron in his bloodstream and that he had much less hemoglobin in his red blood cells anemia was a rather serious problem in the victorian era typically affecting young women it would become known as the virgin's disease and would be associated with a terrible paleness of the skin the lack of hemoglobin meant the red blood cells carried much less nutrients throughout the bloodstream the blood was a pale sickly color and the skin followed suit those who suffered from it would be sickly tired and weak and so jura's doctor discovered someone whose red blood was pale who carried the antibodies and the potential to battle the scourge of the beast he discovered a pale blood when the pale blood was treated with the old blood they were reborn as a hunter and not just any hunter but a special one the hunter's mark was branded into the mind of the pale blood hunter connecting them to the hunter's dream and forcing them into servitude but jura would not become strong enough to overcome the moon presence he was executed by gammon his connection to the hunter's dream severed later gammon would find a new apprentice in a sick woman from the hinterlands leaned the crow but again the pale blood would fail gammon can be found muttering in his sleep almost whimpering oh lawrence what's taking you so long i've grown too old for this of little use now i'm afraid an even more chilling message can be heard though the trigger for the dialogue is currently unknown oh laurence master willem somebody help me unshackle me please anybody i've had enough of this dream the night blocks all sight oh somebody please gaiman is desperate for lawrence and the art of blood ministration to find someone who can put an end to the nightmare who can find a pale blood strong enough to become immune to the taint of the great ones the pc arrives at jana oh yeah pale blood well you've come to the right place yharnam is the home of blood ministration you need only unravel its mystery blood minister here they meet the blood minister after the transfusion the pale blood has become a hunter recall the very beginning of the game in which a scourge beast rises from the blood and closes towards the player upon touching the player the scourge beast immediately bursts into flames it can't touch you because the very first transfusion is coursing through your veins and creating the antibodies required to battle the scourge and then the messengers come this brings us to the last mystery or rather the last mystery we'll be talking about gammon isn't the only denizen of the hunter's dream there are others the messengers are strange little creatures that venerate and worship the hunters the other denizen is the doll it's funny really when the player first starts playing bloodborne they have no idea what rules the world works by they don't know what is possible or impossible upon speaking with the doll it simply becomes something accepted oh so there's a talking doll of course there is they don't question it nor do they consider how it came to be it's just accepted as an occurrence of the world but sit down to think about the doll for a moment and it becomes painfully clear she is so much more than a doll magic doesn't exist in bloodborne there are no wizards no sorcerers there are humans and there are great ones god-like beings capable of acts which we can only consider to be magic as they are too complex for us to understand the workings some humans have learned to use the power of the great ones in small and limited forms but they are not wizards they are scholars and mad men to avoid beating around the bush gammon cannot animate a doll so how did it come to life we know that german had a deep love and care for the doll based upon the obsession for his student maria the doll clothes tell us a deep love for the doll can be surmised by the fine craftsmanship of this article and the care with which it was kept let us again refer back to the tear blood gem created from a shining silver doll tear this blood gem is a quiet but unfaltering friend that continually restores hp the life essence of a hunter perhaps the doll's creator had wished for just such a friend albeit in vain if the hunter locates the abandoned old workshop in the waking world they find a couple of things they find the old hunter's bone the doll set but most importantly they find a cord of the eye every great one loses its child and then yearns for a surrogate the third umbilical cord precipitated the encounter with the pale moon which beckoned the hunters and conceived the hunter's dream the word conceived is very important here the oxford english dictionary gives the word conceive two different meanings the first is as follows form a mental representation of imagine this is the first definition the player infers from the context of the sentence however the other definition is as follows become pregnant with considering how much of bloodborne is centered around birth rebirth pregnancy and motherhood i find it very hard to believe that the use of the word conceive in the chord of the eye is purely accidental gaiman was terribly alone and terribly miserable in his isolation all of the cords of the eye are found from women one from the wet nurse one from ariana and one from yosefka the exception to this rule is the one found in the workshop until you consider that it's found directly next to a woman not a human woman perhaps but a doll of one perhaps in gaiman's madness and his love of the doll that was his only companion the great ones took notice after all the great ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit in his desperation and longing for his beloved maria gammon was willing to give up anything in exchange to get her back when a great one promised to bring her to life gammon signed away his life into servitude but the doll was not maria what is the doll what is it really manner of being is it a thinking and feeling creature inhabiting an artificial body and why sitting in the altar at the old abandoned workshop the place where german signed away his life to servitude of the great ones is there the umbilical cord of a great one a cord of the eye let's pause for a moment to take a look at what we know as the winter lanterns the winter lanterns are as any player who has braved the nightmare full well nose one of if not the most absolute dangerous enemies to be found in bloodborne the winter lanterns are tall lanky women singing out of tune covered in bloody rags they have no head instead they have a large brain covered with eyes that blink and dart in a full circle around them extending from their brain are tentacles which they use to grab the hunter and hold them still on their own the winter lanterns are not particularly hard to deal with what makes them so dangerous is that making even the briefest eye contact with the winter lantern causes an uncontrollable rise of frenzy which quickly does massive damage to the hunter but what is frenzy frenzy is a status effect that occurs whenever the hunter comes into contact with the intense concept of the great ones the amigdale calls frenzy by grasping the hunter and forcing them to look into their eyes the celestial larvae ebritus and the man-eater bores cause frenzy by vomiting on the hunter the gardens of eyes cause frenzy by leaping up and grasping the hunter by their head clinging to them and filling their ears with a mind-piercing high-pitched ringing noise the cathedral watchers can inflict frenzy by wielding a wooden cross twisted into a symbol of the great ones which glows a dark crimson the winter lanterns cause frenzy simply by looking at the hunter from this information we can gather that frenzy is a condition which occurs when an individual is forcibly made to wrap their minds around the eldritch nature of the cosmos and the great ones to put it another way insight is what happens when an individual slowly learns discovers and processes the information of the great ones frenzy is what happens when an individual is forced to process the information the winter lanterns frenzy attack is so powerful that many players do not even bother engaging them they run past desperately hiding from the lanterns as they sing their song whatever you do do not look at them the game even provides mechanics for this providing ways around them or cliffs that the hunter can slide along or sneak underneath to prevent having to look at the winter lanterns because of this the majority of players never take a good look at the winter lanterns they are an enemy that revolves around avoiding looking at them the winter lantern's existence went relatively unexplained until a player managed to snatch a high resolution screenshot of one of the winter lanterns up close she came to a horrifying realization as she took a good long look at the winter lanterns they're wearing the doll's clothes the comparison between the winter lanterns bloody rags and the dolls clothing is disturbing to say the least while the lantern's clothing is covered with blood and they are not wearing the shawl that the doll has over her shoulders every other piece of clothing matches the sleeves the ruffles the skirt the seams they all match perfectly this discovery was just the tip of the iceberg as players instantly began working to gather more screenshots of the winter lanterns and really take a good close look at them while it's difficult to tell many players point to the grooves in their clawed hands as being indicative of the doll's familiar jointed fingers this discovery had me incredibly incredibly excited just like everyone else i was racing to get a picture of the winter lanterns for my own look but when i took a picture of the brain lined with eyes that the lanterns have instead of a head i discovered something well something incredible it may be shaped like a brain but it's not composed of the familiar gray matter which we associate with brains it's not composed of anything human at all i like a few other people discovered that it's not a brain at all it's the messengers ah the little ones inhabitants of the dream they find hunters like yourself worship and serve them speak words they do not but still aren't they sweet the brains of the winter lanterns are comprised of messenger corpses bound and meshed together into a single form there's something just madly genius about it the one enemy in the game who can give us the most horrible terrifying truth just by looking at it is the one enemy we want nothing more than to look away from of course the winter lanterns cause frenzy how could we not go insane by looking upon the twisted form of the one being in the entire world who can offer us comfort and warmth how could our minds possibly comprehend the terrible realization that the doll is linked so closely to these horrible creatures have you ever attacked the doll i mean really attacked the doll i mean taking a cleaver and hacking the doll to pieces many players must be sick at the thought how could you possibly attack the one being who provides you with comfort throughout the horror of bloodborne well if you do attack the doll you might notice that she bleeds her blood is not red like the humans or the great ones her blood also isn't serum like the kin of the cosmos her blood is white almost like bleach the doll bleeds a pale blood bizarrely enough taking a close look at the messengers will reveal something very similar when the messengers leave a note behind did you know they actually rise up from blood of course you did when it's a specter it's the familiar red blood stain but when it's a note it's pure white blood of the messengers and blood of the doll if the hunter kills the doll the next time the hunter returns to the dream they will find her standing there hello good hunter i am a doll here in this dream to look after you she doesn't remember us over time countless hunters have visited this dream the graves here stand in their memory it all seems so long ago now countless hunters that doesn't make sense at all so long ago it wasn't really all that long ago gammon has only been imprisoned for app the most possibly a hundred years or so as for the known pale bloods i can count them on one hand jira eileen and the player we do know however that the blood moon has risen in the past in ancient thumeru the people succumbed to the scourge of beasts what if there haven't been only four blood moons what if there have been hundreds what if over the past thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of years the blood moon has risen and hunters have entered the dream the hunter's mark branded in their minds before falling and succumbing to the moon presence it's part of a cycle and the doll has been there many players have encountered the doll sleeping in the dream when they wake her she will gasp apologize for having drifted off and will return to offering her normal dialogue but there's another situation the hunter can find the doll in sometimes very rarely the doll will be found kneeling before a grave o flora of the moon of the dream o little ones o fleeting will of the ancients let the hunter be safe let him find comfort and let this dream his captor foretell a pleasant awakening be one day a fond distant memory if the hunter interrupts her she will awaken startled and apologize for having drifted off into sleep she will not remember the words she spoke maybe she wasn't always a doll maybe she's had a hundred different shapes and forms but she was there as the pale bloods struggled against the moon presence maybe a long long time ago she was even a maiden in black recall how we discussed the manner in which white blood cells destroy infections they consume them upon first meeting the hunter she tells us you will hunt beasts and i will be here for you to embolden your sickly spirit sickly her white blood only further supports this metaphor as she strengthens our immunity to the scourge and grants us power the pale blood hunter defeats the moon presence by consuming the cords of the eye and the ancient blood echoes becoming too powerful and immune to its influence the great one that has haunted humanity since its conception falls nightmare slain we are left with the doll reaching down to grasp us in our new form remember that the great ones are not all of the same faction of the same species or even of the same ideology the great ones are unique in their desires and their eldritch wishes incomprehensible to us mere human beasts having consumed the scourge and the great ones we have ascended and been born anew ready to bring humanity into its next evolutionary stage and it's all thanks to the doll the doll who nurtured us emboldened us strengthened and cared for us the doll cradles us in a motherly fashion giggling are you cold oh good hunter perhaps not every great one loses its child after all [Music] this was the pale blood hunt written by redgrave narrated by j britton [Music] fear the old blood you

Channel: Jay Britton

Views: 301,188

Keywords:

Id: 8ktMg4eQ1G8

Length: 327min 55sec (19675 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ExMortis1327]

I love this

[u/Cissoid7]

I listened to this about 2 weeks ago. The final conclusion is hands down my favorite interpretation of the lore

[u/gevlektewalruz]

I was contemplating going through it, so ya’ll think it’s worthwhile?