Bloodborne

I'm really fucking confused about Bloodborne's world. Is Yharnam and the beast scourge and actual thing outside of the Hunter's Dream?

>>380775946
>Is Yharnam and the beast scourge and actual thing outside of the Hunter's Dream?
I don't understand the question

>>380775769
Only problem was the use of Healing church blood didn't grant ascension in the first place, so Laurence practically ravaged Yharnam on a false promise

>>380775769
Yes, Old Blood alone doesn't grant ascension, you needed insight as well

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>>380776143
>Only problem was the use of Healing church blood didn't grant ascension in the first place

>defeated Great One: Celestial Emissary
They just had to git gud at it

>>380776407
I don't remember Celestial Emissary ascending through use of blood, where does it say that?

Right, being an ayy lmao who needs lesser species
(who can kill you still) just to reproduce sounds great.

>>380775946
It was in the past

>>380776774
It was the product of healing church experiments on Orphans and other rejects of Yharnam society. The healing church was in the business of Blood experiments, even in the research hall the patients were still hooked up to Old Blood IVs. Since we know of no other type of experimentation besides Old Blood experimentation (that was the entire point of the Healing Church's foundation, after all), if the Celestial Emissary was a product of Healing Church experiments, it was the ultimate fruit of their Old Blood research.

>>380776406
But the Healing Church always involved insight in their blood experiments. That was the point of getting their patients to do stuff like listen for the howl of the sea, which means trying to get them to witness the Eldritch Truth as the Blood worked its magic on their bodies.

Guys I don't like bloodborne. I'm fighting the weelchair guy who's the second last boss since I got eyes on the inside and shit and I'm not really feeling anything. Only took me like 15 or so hours too. Maybe the DLC will change things but I have to admit, this game is missing the vibe. I was hoping for an Anor Londo kind of moment but no, nothing. Bosses are good and the gameplay is great, not nearly enough weapons nor equipment though. Also the story is as confusing as ever but that is to be expected from Miyazaki. Basically all I know is I'm a hunter and that I may be a beast or maybe the crow lady had just gone nuts I dont fucking know. Can anybody give me a quick rundown of what is actually going on?

I wish I were a wiggly baby from space.

>>380776832
t. foul beast

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This is Lord Amygdala.

Say something nice about her.

>>380777557
>her

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>>380777557
If only I were so gross

Not sure I fully understand how the beast plague works.

Am i right in thinking that the blood inherently turns people into beasts eventually? What stops this from happening to the main character? Why is the beast plague worse than usual during the events of the game? Where does the hunter's nightmare fit into this?

>>380777335
>Can anybody give me a quick rundown of what is actually going on?
Here is your quick rundown of Bloodborne's plot anon. Stay tuned because this might take a while.

Also full disclosure: I can justify literally everything that I'm about to type with in-game evidence, but for the sake of brevity and overall coherency it won't be in the main posts. But if you ask for it, I'll be happy to provide it.

>>380778051
Once upon a time there was a civilization of people who built all of their cities entirely underground. One day, they dug too deep and discovered a series of tombs belonging to a race of slumbering supernatural eldritch creatures from beyond the stars, creatures that these people named the "Great Ones." These people, who now called themselves Pthumerians, made a pact with the slumbering Great Ones to act as their gravekeepers in exchange for the wisdom of the Eldritch Truth, which transformed them into a race of superhumanly powerful sorcerers.

As part of this pact, the Pthumerians were required to treat marriage as a blood contract, to be sealed with the blessing of the Great Ones, and only underneath this blessing were they allowed to have children. However, the Pthumerians didn't exactly do what they were told. As a consequence of having unauthorized (bastard) children, the Great Ones cursed the Pthumerian's eldritch blood with parasites called Vermin, which would possess them in moments of anger or bloodlust, and thus cause them to transform into hideous beasts. The plague of beasts would destroy the Pthumerian civilization, and the ruins of the vast underground non-euclidean labyrinth they built would go untouched until the time of Byrgenwerth.

lesson of bloodborne: dont accept old, vile, or pale blood from strangers. you might get space AIDS or worse.

>>380777557
It knows how to catch a blade bow arrow with its face like a champ.

>>380778169
Byrgenwerth was a college that was situated on the outskirts of Yharnam, and specialized in the study of archaeology, anthropology, and history. One day, archaeologists from Byrgenwerth struck metaphysical gold by accidentally tunneling into the Old Pthumerian Labyrinth. The college quickly recognized the significance of their find, and started paying spelunkers to go into the still-occupied Labyrinth, fight off the locals, and loot any treasure they could find for study. The administration of Byrgenwerth focused all the efforts of their school towards researching the arcane artifacts that were coming up, searching for a way to harness the power contained within and ascend their existences to the level of the Labyrinth's denizens.

One of the artifacts that Byrgenwerth's tomb prospectors recovered was a sample of ancient Blood. This Old Blood possessed remarkable healing powers and a direct connection to the Great One Formless Oedon, but experimenting with it came at a terrible price: anyone who used it would inherit the Pthumerian curse that swam within the fluid, and would eventually succumb to beasthood. Master Willem, headmaster of the college, saw the dangers of continuing blood research and forbade its' usage in pursuing ascendance. Nonetheless, Blood remained ubiquitous in its' application of healing frenzy and the injuries of the tomb prospectors as they fought their way through the Labyrinth. Thus, a constant staff of beast exterminators (the first Hunters) were kept on call to put down transformed researchers and act as muscle during explorations of the depths of the Labyrinth.

>>380778280
Problem: research was progressing terribly. Willem and his associates wanted to become Great Ones but they didn't have the slightest clue how. Willem believed that the key to unlocking the cosmos relied on lining his brain with eyes, so that he could see beyond the limitations of his physical two eyes and observe the Eldritch Truth that lurked beneath the surface of reality. How, exactly, to do this was a bit of a conundrum. From their studies they knew that a guaranteed way to acquire these cerebral eyes would be to consume the umbilical cord of an infant Great One, but of course 3rd Umbilical Cords aren't exactly lying around for the taking. Not to mention that when the college got their hands on these Cords, they could be used in other ways besides eating that Willem wouldn't have approved of.

One of the problems with sending mortal men into the Labyrinth to fight Eldritch foes is that they tend to die like bitches. Combating Cosmic opponents without Cosmic backing of your own is a somewhat useless effort. So, the Hunters called for help in their task to bring back goodies to Byrgenwerth. Gehrman, the first Hunter and leader of the earliest generations of Hunters, worked together with his friend and colleague, Laurence, in a ritual to summon the Great Ones behind Willem's back. Using an Umbilical Cord as bait, they beckoned the nameless Moon Presence, and convinced it to become the patron of the Hunters in exchange for Gehrman becoming its' surrogate child. Gehrman would be imprisoned within the newly-formed Hunter's Dream forever, and all of his students would receive the ability to respawn, rally HP, and level up to attain superhuman strength.

As useful as this was, it still didn't help Willem get any closer to finding his eyes.

>>380777557
has a nice squishy head
>>380777753
yes
probably something to do with game design, but there's the rune from laurence
probably because there have been too many hunts since the town's littered with gravestones and caskets, or maybe the mensis ritual or something
hunter's nightmare seems to be a different curse all together

>>380778395
What DID help Willem find his eyes was the discovery of the Fishing Hamlet. The Hamlet was some coastal town in bumfuck nowhere that was blessed with arcane contact when the corpse of the Great One Kos washed ashore on the beach one day. The villagers started experimenting with Kos' body to gain arcane power, and some absolute madman even got her pregnant (death is not as big a deal for the Great Ones as it is for people). When Byrgenwerth caught wind of a town of half-ascended fishpeople, they sent in the Hunters to subdue them. Once subdued, they vivisected the poor fishpeople in order to find their interior eyes, looking for clues on how to obtain eyes of their own. Byrgenwerth even went as far as defiling Kos' corpse in their search for enlightenment. This did not go over well with the fishpeople, nor with Kos or her Child. The Great Ones are sympathetic in spirit to the needs of their charges, and furthermore do not take kindly to defilement. As revenge for these sins, the Orphan of Kos cursed the Hunters in his mother's name. From that day onwards, the Hunters would suffer from blood-drunkenness, a disease that rotted the brain gradually upon continual imbibement of the blood, and would eventually turn the afflicted Hunters into rabid, indiscriminate blood-crazed killers without even transforming into beasts. The Orphan then retreated into a Nightmare of its' own making, to hide forevermore from the humans who defiled his mother's body. Some believe that the Hunters' defilement of Kos' corpse killed the Orphan in the Waking World, and that it exists solely in the dream.

My personal interpretation of the lore is that Rom (a former Byrgenwerth scholar) "ascended" at this point in time, and becoming a literally retarded Great One was an ironic punishment from Kos for being a total cockhead in the Hamlet. But this could have happened at any time when Byrgenwerth was still going strong, before the Schism between Byrgenwerth and the Church.

>>380778501
Speaking of schisms, the loss of the Hamlet meant that Willem's research now was officially rudderless. This situation provoked internal dissent within Byrgenwerth's ranks, because they felt like they were wasting time pursing bullshit instead of focusing on the really lucrative business (Blood research). Among these dissidents was Laurence, friend of Gehrman. Laurence and his associates hypothesized that if blood+no insight = beast, then blood+insight = Great Ones, and that the transformative abilities of the Blood could be harnessed. Willem thought that this was retarded and would only lead to trouble, but he no longer had enough authority to stop Laurence from leaving and taking all of his friends (including the Hunters) with him.

Laurence and Co. set up the Healing Church in Yharnam as a front for their research, exposing the towns' populace to Old Blood while purporting to be a 100% benign medical organization that were good ol' boys who were totally trustworthy you guys. Their reputation as doctors saved them from the townsfolk asking too many questions about certain citizens disappearing and the screaming coming from the upper floors of the Grand Cathedral. The Hunters acted as an independent organization who cleaned up the beastly mess left behind by a whole town using Blood at the same time, though some Hunters chose to affiliate themselves with the Church anyway (see: Executioners).

>>380778594
The Grand Cathedral housed the Healing Church's research labs, where all of their kidnapping victims met with gruesome ends. The Healing Church was still inexperienced with Blood techniques, and were doing stupid shit like having their patients imbibe seawater while being injected with old blood and torture devices and whatever else. The person in charge of keeping these patients (torture victims) alive was Lady Maria, one of Gehrman's original students and secret crush.

Maria was feeling more than her fair share of guilt over her role in removing fishman as well as not putting her patients out of their misery. Not doing regular psych evaluations on their staff would prove to be the Healing Church's undoing when Maria would bring their progress crashing down around their ears.

In addition to Blood, the Healing Church was very much interested in exploring the Nightmare. Being heirs to the will of Byrgenwerth, they felt obligated to continue the more promising research leads Willem had explored, and this included exploring the Old Labyrinth, and the search for umbilical cords. Their big lead on infant Great One Umbilical Cords (the Orphan of Kos) had retreated to the Nightmare and the Healing Church was determined to get him back. To this end, they constructed the Astral Clocktower at the top of the Research Labs as a means of forcing their way into the Nightmare. In doing so they opened a back door into the Orphan's hiding spot, which unfortunately was inhabited by nightmare versions of the fishpeople that had beat their asses back in Byrgenwerth.

>>380778714
To re-enact the first fishman purge, the Healing Church sent in Maria, as she was one of the oldest and strongest Hunters around. Unfortunately for them, Maria's guilt caused her to betray the Healing Church and side with the Orphan. Instead of obeying her boss's wishes, she forged a pact with the Orphan of Kos in a manner similar to what Gehrman had done with the MP. This pact set up Nightmare versions of Yharnam and the Research Labs, and forcibly whisked all Blood-drunk Hunters to these locations upon death. Doing this set up a massive army of superhuman rabid guard dogs between the Nightmare Hamlet and any curious interlopers, and also doubled as an ironic punishment for the Hunters. Maria sealed her pact with her own suicide.

The inauguration of Maria's Hunter's Nightmare whisked herself (now dead) and any blood-drunk Hunters throughout Yharnam (aka most of them by this point) into the Nightmare, leaving the townsfolk whispering about the Hunter's sins. Unfortunately for the Healing Church, Maria took the key to the Clocktower, the Celestial Dial, with her, rendering it useless in the Waking World. Without the means to continue breaking into the Nightmare, the Healing Church was forced to settle with their unsuccessful Blood experiments.

That is, until Healing Church spelunkers found the Great One Ebrietas inside the Old Labyrinth. Ebrietas was a sympathetic entity like all Great Ones, and when the Healing Church asked for advice on how to improve their Blood methodology, she gave it freely. This partnership marked the formation of the Choir, and with these improved methods the Church was officially in business.

>>380778169
Wasn't the beast curse from Orphan? Like when you get teleported into the DLC, there's that voiceover about cursing hunters forevermore.

>>380778820
Nothing says "ascend beyond the mortal plane" like "kidnap some orphans (who will miss them?) and turn them into hideous monsters," and so the Healing Church's new experimental test subjects were children supplied by the Upper Cathedral Ward's official orphanage that was conveniently placed right next to remains of their old Research Labs. The products of this research were the ayylmaos that you see throughout the game. While they weren’t Great Ones, they WERE Kin, so these new techniques were definitely producing results.

However, factions within the Healing Church were impatient. They felt that since the Great Ones were sympathetic in spirit, all they needed to do was ask the Great Ones for ascension, and ascension would be granted. It's not like there wasn't precedent for this exact thing happening before. The Healing Church maintained a shitload of records that went all the way back to Byrgenwerth, though time eroded their accuracy and the memory of those involved.

Inaccuracy issues aside, the Healing Church was in possession of enough history at this point to remember that the Great Ones once granted full ascension to Rom back in Byrgenwerth. Some within the Healing Church believed that they would do it again, if they would ask. Pursuing Blood research was inconsistent and dangerous in comparison to literally just asking the Great Ones for eyes on the inside. Because of how wildly different these two research methods were, the Healing Church leadership split in half, with the Choir becoming the Choir and the School of Mensis. The Mensis dedicated themselves to acquiring eyes through supplication.

>>380775769
No one says they are misguided. They just didn't succeed for themselves. Bloodborne isn't really a story of good vs evil.

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>>380778169
>>380778280
>>380778395
>>380778501
>>380778594
>>380778714
>>380778820
>>380778939
Thanks! That's a lot of lore

>>380778889
Beast Curse comes from nameless moon presence, not the Orphan. The Orphan is responsible for Hunters going blood-drunk, which is a different thing. You can tell that the two curses are different because Blood Drunk Hunters who are still human (like Henryk, Bloody Crow, Human Cascoigne, human hunters in the Nightmare, etc.) aren't considered as beasts by the game's mechanics. Conversely, when Ludwig regains his mind halfway through the fight, he's still counted as a beast despite now being mostly-lucid. Clearly there is a disconnect between your state of mind and how beastly the game considers you. Beastliness turns out just to be a measure of how furry your body is.

MP is the most logical Great One to be responsible for Beasthood, because of several reasons. The first is that the Pthumerians were originally cursed with Beastliness as a result of them fucking with unauthorized babies -- see Loran items, Ring of Betrothal, etc. Of all the Great Ones to get pissed off about baby shit, the MP is the most logical choice because judging by the "Red Moon" description, it seems to have some authority over reproduction. While you can always make the claim that it's some unknown or random Great One responsible, it makes no narrative sense to do so. So MP it is.

>>380779284
We're not done
>>380778939
moving on:

Problem: how to attract the Great Ones’ attention. Praying for eyes does little good if nobody is listening. Again, Byrgenwerth's old records came in handy. The Mensis were aware of the fact that Gehrman and Laurence had once summoned the Great Ones with the aid of a 3rd Umbilical Cord. So, all the Mensis would need is an Umbilical Cord of their own and they would be set. Where, exactly, the Mensis got their cord is a matter of debate. Some believe that the Mensis got a piece of an Umbilical Cord that Byrgenwerth looted from the Orphan way back in the day. I feel that this is unlikely, as Willem would have immediately consumed such a thing if he had it, and thus it wouldn't be available for the Mensis to use. I personally believe that the Mensis got it from the Choir's stock of baby Ebrietas' that you see lying around everywhere in the Upper Cathedral Ward. One of the advantages of having Old Blood spread everywhere in the city was that Oedon occasionally felt the need to get women pregnant, and the Choir collected these infants for study. While they didn't eat the resulting Cords -- from the Cord item description we know that they had forgotten by this point that doing so would lead to ascendance (imperfect records as mentioned above) -- they did have a collection of them.

>>380779489
So, Cord in hand, the leader of the Mensis, named Micolash, began poking around this Cord in their Advent Plaza in Yahargul with the aim of summoning the Great Ones. While he probably wanted to summon the Moon like Gehrman and Laurence had before, he accidentally summoned the Great One Mergo, the infant child of the Pthumerian Queen Yharnam and the formless Great One Oedon (who may or may not have been the illegitimate child that caused the Pthumerians to get cursed in the first place). This contact got Micolash and all of his organization swept up into the Nightmare and himself placed as its' Host by Mergo. It also petrified any non-Mensis personnel who were unfortunate enough to be in the Advent Plaza at the time. While not the Moon, making contact is making contact, and Micolash asked Mergo if his organization could have brains lined with eyes. Mergo, being only an infant, tried its' best to accommodate their wishes. Unfortunately, its' best wasn't enough, and instead of granting ascendance to Micolash it gave them the Brain of Mensis (which is indeed lined with eyes) instead -- this is information from the original JP text of Mergo's 3rd Umbilical Cord, which got mangled in translation. Seeing that asking Mergo got them nowhere, Micolash and Co. started making plans for attracting other Great Ones for help.

(note: it could have been Mergo's Wet Nurse that is the source of the Nightmare of Mensis, not Mergo, and nobody knows which, but it also doesn't really matter which)

>>380779606
The good thing about being trapped in the Nightmare with Mergo forever was that the Mensis no longer needed to look especially hard for bait for attracting other Great Ones. The child-obsessed Great Ones would naturally flock to Mergo's crying if they could use the arcane to project this "signal" to the Cosmos. After that, it would be a simple matter of persuading these Great Ones to grant them eyes, and ideally, return them to the Waking World so they could use their newfound Great One status to rule as gods or some shit. From various lore notes we can surmise that the original plan was still to attract the the Moon, but now they had extra bait to lure it out.

What the Mensis appear to have done was enlist the aid of rogue Pthumerian bell witches and snatchers in conducting their Ritual. The snatchers would kidnap sacrificial Yharnamites and then melt them down in huge vats of blood, and the Bell Witches would then summon them back. The big payoff of this summoning was the One Reborn.

>>380779865
My personal belief is that the One Reborn was the Mensis' attempt to spawn back into the Waking World as a Great One. The Moon responded to their lure, and the Bell Witches attempted to use the Moon's power and a Yellow Backbone to transform the Mensis into a fresh Great One on their way back from being summoned from the Nightmare into the Waking World, with sacrificial Yharnamites as raw building material. It obviously didn't work, and a side effect of the Moon descending on Yharnam was that the potency of the Scourge of Beasts went into overdrive, nuking the town.

Problem: broadcasting this "signal" to the cosmos was somewhat challenging while Rom is still alive. Rom's big gimmick was that it obscured all manner of rituals, and so the Mensis' Ritual was cockblocked until you killed it. Congratulations, you fucked up.

It is interesting to note that the Moon does not descend on Cainhurst, Hemwick, Byrgenwerth, or even the Nightmare of Mensis. It drops EXCLUSIVELY over downtown Yharnam. Most people dismiss this as laziness on From's part, but I believe that there is a reason for this discrepancy.

>>380779969
A part of the Mensis Ritual was bringing the Nightmare and the Waking World into extreme close contact -- this was the purpose of all the Amygdala everywhere in Yharnam, and the effect of this was everyone getting frenzied from excess cosmic exposure after the moon dropped. Because only Yharnam was brought into close contact with the Nightmare, only Yharnam (not any of the surrounding areas) suffered the effects. By why, then, did the moon not descend over the Nightmare as well, if the Mensis were residing within the Nightmare and were seeking to make contact with the Moon from inside the Nightmare?

The answer is that the Moon WAS attempting to descend on the Nightmare but was prevented from doing so. Recall: the Moon Presence wants Mergo dead. Your contract as a Hunter is the assassination of Mergo, all else is either ignored or treated as collateral damage in pursuit of this goal. The Moon was trying to descend on the Nightmare and do the job itself, but was prevented by (presumably) the Wet Nurse or some other entity, which is why it had to contract the kill out to a 3rd party to start with. But because the Nightmare and Downtown Yharnam were in contact due to the Mensis Ritual, an attempt to descend on the Nightmare was also an attempt to descend on Yharnam, and so even though it couldn't do so in the Nightmare the Red Moon still dropped in the Waking World over Downtown Yharnam.

>>380780038
With the Moon having thoroughly fucked the Mensis' plans up, you meet Micolash as he desperately tries to contact Kos as his backup-backup-backup plan, having no other Great One with a proven track record of granting eyes to fall back on. Yeah, she probably still hates Byrgenwerth for what they did, but they don't have much of a choice, do they?

So, if we assume that a 100% completion + DLC playthrough is canon (which we should), the Hunter has accomplished the following:

1. ended the Scourge of Beasts by killing the MP
2. freed the Hunters from Blood-Drunkenness and the Hunter's Nightmare by killing the Orphan of Kos
3. destroyed the last remnants of the Choir, School of Mensis, and Byrgenwerth aka purged the town of the influence of the mad scientists who were ruining everything
4. has transformed into a Great One by consuming Umbilical Cords
5. is going to lead humanity to ascension "the right way"

Things are looking up for Yharnam. Too bad virtually everyone in the town had to die first. Also, Willem was right the whole time: “Evolution without courage will be the ruin of our race.”

>>380780205
Ultimately, the joke is on the Mensis, because while they were busing failing at making the One Reborn, the Choir perfected their Blood techniques in the form of the Great One Celestial Emissary. So the Choir won that race.

Some miscellaneous tidbits about major side factions in the game:
1. Cainhurst came about when a scholar from Byrgenwerth brought a sample Queen Yharnam's blood to the Cainhurst Nobles, and upon imbibing it, they acquired the powers of Yharnam and her family. They then took it upon themselves to mix their native culture with the culture of the Pthumerians they had just effectively replaced, seeking to take up their torch.
2. The Executioners were NOT official Church Hunters, they had their own independent workshop and were merely aligned with Church interests. Ludwig was one of the Executioners, and his big idea was making the relationship official and starting an order of Hunters within the Church’s organization.
3. Hemwick was contracted by the Church for the preparation of eyes, which are useful ritual materials.


This concludes the plot summary of Bloodborne's main story. Please respond.