history of yharnam part 2: the old hunters, the fishing hamlet, and caryll’s runes

Posted on August 12, 2023January 7, 2024 by Bea

the discovery of blood entailed the discovery of beasts, and the discovery of beasts necessitated hunters.

the original group of hunters, colloquially known as “the old hunters” to differentiate them from the common riff-raff, were shaped largely by the efforts the first hunter, a man named gehrman. it is unclear what gehrman’s role was prior to his work as a hunter, but he was likely a student, as he uses the title of “master” to address willem. we know he was a close associate of a student named laurence, that he had an apprentice named maria who was once a knight of the castle cainhurst, and was a practitioner of an art called “quickening“. his focus on agility and maximizing the amount of blood spilled laid the foundation for all hunters to come.

gehrman is the inventor of the “trick weapon”, the first of which was a simple magnetic lock and hinge that changes the burial blade from a one handed knife to a scythe. the magnetic force was inherent to the iron used in the creation of the blade; the burial blade and its sister weapon the blade of mercy were forged from siderite and take advantage of the magnetic force to “transform”. these, the oldest weapons of “the workshop” (gehrman’s workshop), served an additional purpose: these astral materials contain traces of the arcane. it seems that these two weapons are the only weapons that would be capable of severing a hunter’s connection to the great ones and, by extension, the boons that come with their attention.

not that those boons have been sought or discovered yet. the arcane world was only just becoming known to the students of byrgenwerth. as of now, the explicit purpose of the burial blade was to end the seemingly endless lives of the pthumerians and beasts for good. the blade of mercy appeared to have been created as a contingency plan in the event that gehrman fell to the undead curse of blood and was entrusted with a foreigner who could take a comrade’s life graciously…or at least thoroughly.

the old hunters are a bunch of freaks. only a handful are still alive in modern yharnam. otherwise, the player will only experience them by calling them as summons for boss battles. the in game lore for the mechanics of the summon system clarifies that these hunters that can be summoned have “long since passed from the dream” but will answer to the siren call of the hunt.

some old hunters the player will encounter as major characters or boss encounters. others appear to be nondescript nobodies…at first, anyway.

every chalice dungeon (save the last one) connected to the story has a secret, fully functional, but cut fourth layer that only became accessible once hex-editing was possible. several corpses on the fourth layer of the hintertomb, home to “cesspools of noxious snakes and insects”, can be looted for evidence of unusual creatures harboring arcane power. the mysteries presented by these invertebrates captured the attention of a separate faction within byrgenwerth, sparking the study and collection of “phantasms” present (or were once present) in the labyrinth. the discovery of the augur of ebrietas, a slug (snail? the empty phantasm shells could be reasonably assumed to have belonged to the augur) that summons flailing tentacles of unknown origin, and the arcane properties of pearl slugs drove the school’s continued plunges into the depths in spite of the danger posed. part of this research involved discovering the potential beneficial parasitic qualities of these creatures, which could inhabit soft tissue, like eyes and be used to harness bizarre powers.

while continuing to investigate the ruins, byrgenwerth became aware of a possibly pthumerian fishing village where a washed up carcass of an oyster/globster monster was teeming with otherworldly parasites and carried a stillborn fetus¹. the so-called “kos parasites” resemble barnacles without their shell, and judging by the appearance of the villagers these barnacles have made themselves at home on what must have once been pthumerian hosts. its unclear if the fishing hamlet’s residents were transformed against their will or deliberately cultivated the look, but the result is a gaggle of fish-like monster people with physical appearances similar to the monster on the shore. whether of their own accord or because its the will of the creatures that have taken them over, the villagers actively cultivate millions of odd slugs for mostly unknown purposes; we do know that they are used as lamp oil on a day to day basis².

upon arrival to the village, the school and its hunters helped themselves to a little bit of genocide just for fun. villager’s heads were cut off and “treppaned” open in the search for “eyes on the inside” by forcibly removing the barnacles from their skulls. the monstrous corpse was desecrated by the byrgenwerth researchers who took her child (as the villagers of the fishing hamlet chant) and the orphan’s “umbilical cord”, a string of flesh not unlike a human umbilical cord but lined with eyes. it is NOT a literal umbilical cord, the orphan still has that attached to his body, but a translation hiccup muddied the waters on the initial understanding of the nature of the “umbilical cords”.

the NA translation is “one third of umbilical cord” leading people to erroneously believe that its one umbilical cord split into three parts (made even more confusing by the existence of four umbilical cords in the game). the EUR release got it right: it should be “third umbilical cord”. the NA release calls it a “precursor to the umbilical cord” which makes no sense in or out of context. the re-translation project provided a much more comprehensible alternative: “Only infants have [third umbilical cords], even in Great Ones. Calling it an “umbilical cord” comes from that”. as in, they are not literal umbilical cords, but they are LIKE umbilical cords in that they are only found in infants. now you have an inkling of understanding why great ones keep losing their children; the children are host to something valuable.

“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 were to ever
match Their greatness.“

careful inspection of the umbilical cord’s art reveals that it sits in a puddle of silver liquid. the villagers chant: “a call to the bloodless, wherever they be”.

but this wasn’t just any ol’ pile of fish goo they were fucking with, it was the corpse of the great one, kos (or as some say, kosm). kos’ wrath and retribution would come in due time, as this event birthed a powerful curse: the creation of a surreal plane of torment known as the hunter’s nightmare. the hunters responsible for the massacre and those who became “blood drunk” from overdosing on blood would be snatched away into a bloody, never-ending hunt in a warped and twisted facsimile of yharnam and the fishing hamlet. blood drunk hunters, who sustained themselves entirely on imbibing blood, could be identified by their rotting eyes.

“Lay the curse of blood upon them, and their children, and their children’s children, for evermore.
Each wretched birth will plunge each child into a lifetime of misery.”

but that all comes much later.

lady maria could not tolerate her role in the fishing hamlet massacre. as she was already sickened by the use of blood blades (in spite of her familial relationship to queen annalise of cainhurst), she threw her beloved weapon into the fishing village well when she could no longer tolerate its presence. she, with others, joined laurence, the medical student, when he split from byrgenwerth to found the healing church. its not explicit that the fishing village massacre was the reason for the split, as there were ideological differences brewing that also came to a head, but a one sided genocide SEEMS like a matter that would cause a splinter between one faction that is notoriously ruthless in its methods and another that tries to be in the business of healing.

i’m going to add an editor’s note that from this point on the timeline is muddled, confusing, vague and occasionally contradictory. people have moved heaven and earth trying to make sense of the inconsistencies, but the truth of the matter is that bloodborne suffered the fromsoft late game curse and was chopped up beyond recognition at the 11th hour for whatever internal development reason. whats interesting to me is the stuff they chose to keep that’s complete and utter chaff. there are extremely rare items that do literally nothing but sit in your inventory, or quests that are completely pointless. enemies appear where they “shouldn’t” and it difficult to tell if they are trying to impart some kind of information or if we’re just getting dragon-assed in lost izalith again (if you know….you know). its very odd and i think thats what draws people back again and again.

i can give you overviews of these events in the approximate order that they happened but there is no guarantee that they happened exactly in this order or in this fashion.

the schism at byrgenwerth came down to this: willem refused to use the blood until they understood it better and has become fascinated by the existence of great ones. laurence, on the other hand, recognized the blood’s potential as miracle medicine. the instantaneous healing powers were too enticing for laurence to ignore, but willem was steadfast in his belief that humanity was not yet ready to reckon with whatever it was that was happening here; one must “fear the old blood”. willem’s distaste for use of the blood is mentioned off-hand in the rune workshop tool description.

caryll runes side note for newbies: caryll runes are a gameplay mechanic that give you buffs you can switch in and out by using an iron brand on your consciousness. the runes themselves are transcriptions of “the inhuman utterings of the Great Ones”. all but a handful of the runes were discovered/transcribed by runesmith caryll and some were explicitly secret ones, hidden from public knowledge.

almost nothing explicit is known about caryll except they were a student of byrgenwerth. the workshop tool named for them is found on a dead hunter tied to a chair as the reward for surviving the witch of hemwick boss fight. people will try to tell you that the schmuck in the chair is caryll but that’s fucking stupid. caryll was not a hunter and there’s no reason why caryll would have the means or motive to pilfer their own tool from the hunter’s dream. i dont know why this guy has it. maybe hes just an asshole and stole it from the dream to be a dick. who knows. hes just griefing us lol. classic trolling

did he fall through the ceiling into the chair. what the fuck is this lmfao. its like the witches found a way to make an interrogation room lamp without electricity. do you think they went in the room above and jumped up and down until the floor broke.

all three translations agree that caryll runes “do not rely” on using blood, so its significant when blood DOES start to appear in the runes. one could read this as indication of caryll’s transition from byrgenwerth to the healing church after deciding to follow laurence, like most of his peers. some covenant runes are filled with unknown goos and liquids, all of the runes relating to a mysterious great one named oedon (whose existence is only made known through the descriptions of “his” items) are bleeding or “contain a nuance of Blood.”

i suppose we should do a quick oedon sidebar before he becomes VERY plot relevant. formless oedon is a great one who “lacks a form, existing only in voice”. we know very little about him except he has a chapel in his name in yharnam that we use as a central hub/safe zone and he likes blood and broads. hell, who doesn’t. hes a man (?) of taste.

according to the linked caryll rune, blood is the essence of oedon and oedon is always looking for good blood. the thing about oedon is that you might be a part of that process and not even know it; an “inadvertent worshiper surreptitiously seeking precious blood” (as they say).

willem sought “eyes on the inside”, which drove him and the others to defile the great ones. but what the fuck was he on about?

in one sense, to gain “eyes on the inside” is a cutesy way of describing “insight”, or the ability to see beyond the mundane. but the scholars were also being quite literal; in order to think on higher planes they were putting slugs in their fucking head. if we do some reading between the lines on the description for the “spark hunter badge“, the description of “a style of inquiry that […] closely followed the methodology of Byrgenwerth” is almost certainly “expose yourself to it” or “use living specimens” based on, well, everything they and their protegees do.

what happens to byrgenwerth after this is hazy. we’ll hop back in occasionally, but it too suffered from the fromsoft editing hack and slash. so trying to make concrete sense of it is a fool’s errand. let’s focus on the foundation of the healing church for a while.

^{1. this video provides a great look at the model of strange black mist emitting from kos’ corpse after the final boss fight of the DLC. this is probably what they took from the fishing village, not a huge old man baby who shoots lighting and jumps around like a frog on a skillet}

^2.source^{which leads to}^{this image}

history of yharnam part 1: the founding of pthumeru, cainhurst and the labyrinth, the discovery by byrgenwerth

Posted on August 12, 2023January 7, 2024 by Bea

in order to make sense of the world of bloodborne, one must first make sense of the from software company “house style” or, at the very least, make an attempt to recognize the recurring themes present in their catalog of RPG titles. each addition has helped refine the central messages core to the ethos of the dev team through repetition. this makes the act of playing fromsoft games sound like a monotonous experience; fromsoft sometimes iterates in expected and annoying ways: there will always be a poison swamp, there will always be a shoeless babe, there will always be a guy waiting to kick you into a hole. but their means of obfuscating or re-framing these ideas are imaginative. a transformation into a plant has different implications and intentions depending on the setting; in bloodborne, it’s a desirable outcome caused on purpose to push human evolution beyond its bounds. in dark souls 3, it’s involuntary as part of a means of returning the world to its primordial form. if i told you that dark souls, bloodborne, and sekiro all had the same plot, you’d tell me to shut the hell up and then push me into a ravine. and yet, these games all share one very specific message that acts as the base point for the cruel, dying worlds we explore: if we could re-spawn like in a video game, it would be fucked up or what? bloodborne is no exception.

fromsoft’s creation process involves folding in real-life history and cultural knowledge that i think is lost on the majority of the western player base. i’m not sure how much of what they reference is common knowledge to japanese players, but i do feel confident in saying that bloodborne leans on these references harder than most fromsoft’s games. for example, i can reasonably argue that the history of yharnam began with a meteorite not dissimilar to one that fell in japan that was used to make legendary swords(not unlike the a select few in the game) comprised of meteoric, magnetic iron or siderite. and with the arrival of the cosmos came the discovery of the arcane.

untold eons ago, a humanoid race known as the pthumerians served slumbering mysterious, otherworldly beings, known as the great ones, “beings that might be described as gods“. the great ones spoke in “inhuman utterings” to those capable or worthy of hearing their speech. those blessed would become stronger and imbued with strange powers. at least one of these voices was successfully transcribed during the course of pthumerian history, as it appears on gravestones, altars, and as decor: “hunter“, a blood rune.

as the proliferance of the rune might suggest, pthumeru was a society revolving around the collection of blood. either as a consequence of living underground or due to becoming exposed to the deliberately vague notion of “the eldritch truth” as a consequence of their proximity to the great ones, they developed a unique and startling appearance: pallid skin, black eyes, and slacking jaws. they are very tall and gaunt with unsettling proportions. they vary in size and shape to one another, but all but the most diminutive tower over the average human.

over time, the pthumerians settled a capital city, pthumeru, and elected a leader who took the name yharnam, pthumerian queen.¹ this ruler was given a ring imbued with special meaning by the great ones demonstrating her commitment to bear their child. this child would be known as a “child of blood” (the ramifications or meaning of this are not known). she still wears the ring today and waits at a bloodstained altar for the ceremony to commence. all that’s massing, it seems, is a groom.

what little we know of pthumerian culture we must glean from what we find in the chalice dungeons ourselves. their aristocracy wears red, they have the ability to spontaneously generate controllable flames, and their weapons are based on the real life meteoric iron swords from indonesia, the kris. fire paper is a pthumerian invention (obtainable by the player only after they obtain a badge for tomb prospectors) that allows the user to create a flame from nothing. the only enemies that drop this item are pthumerian labyrinth watchers who use flaming weapons themselves.

the serpentine shape of the weapons might be more than mere aesthetics: there are a scant few references to snakes (one of the fromsoft dev teams favorite creatures to fixate on) in a religious or elevated context in pthumerian culture.a “pilgrim” who traverses the remains of pthumeru in the modern day carries a rosary with a caduceus in place of a crucifix.

within the hintertomb, a location described as “unceremonious catacombs” without ritual significance, became a nesting ground for “cesspools of noxious snakes and insects“. these twisted clumps of snakes are a source of murky, purple slow poison, which is harvested and used as a coating in poison knives resembling the indonesian kujang. the item description strongly suggests that the poison knife is a scalpel used in a medical or research capacity that became a hunter tool/means of self-defense incidentally. in pthumeru, the poison knife is used as a weapon still by the labyrinth watchers; in the cosmically fascinated city of isz, it was used for a greater, secret arcane purpose (as hinted at by this otherwise common item only becoming available for purchase after obtaining the late game cosmic eye watcher badge). snake venom contains a blood clotting agent that turns blood into a jelly-like substance nearly identical to an item cut from the game’s final release: queenly blood².

but THIS queenly blood is NOT queen yharnam’s queenly blood. yharnam’s blood is a red, rapid, dirty poison.

when the player arrives in the ruins of this civilization, evidence strongly suggests that a civil war broke out between at least two factions. the resulting schism pushed some pthumerian aristocracy to the surface³. here, they resumed their rule over their loyal subjects and became the modern day, blue-clad royalty of cainhurst castle. the evidence for the cainhurst/pthumeru connection is strong: living and hostile cainhurst knights with more modern armor can be found in the lowest levels of the pthumerian labyrinth. bloodlickers, a mosquito-like enemy that is exclusively found in cainhurst above ground, can be coerced from their hiding places in the chalice dungeons by performing visceral attacks and leaving blood splattered on the ground⁴. small, gold statues identical to the large, marble ones in cainhurst can be found in treasure rooms.

a collection of conspicuous portraits in cainhurst depicting the royal family and their knights and ladies includes a portrait of a bell-ringing “mad pthumerian” of the labyrinth, as well as a portrait of a man with the face of the cainhurst/pthumerian labyrinth exclusive enemy “the lost child of antiquity“⁵. the antiquated armor (old enough to be one of the few outfits unavailable to the player) worn by the man in the portrait can be found en masse scattered on the ground of specific chalice dungeon rooms. the skeletons of the pthumerians who once occupied this armor can be found piled into disrespectful heaps pierced by a labyrinth warrior’s great sword.

bloodborne is a game about dichotomies and divergent evolutions and, perhaps, the first true split began here: the cainhurst royalty and the pthumerian royalty BOTH aspire to have the mysterious and presumably powerful child of blood as a surrogate for a great one and both have knights in their employ that work explicitly to further this goal, putting them at odds with one another. today’s cainhurst royalty maintains some of the “pthumerian look” but not to such an exaggerated degree, with the resemblance fading with each removed generation.

pictured are some canonical cainhurst royalty and their descendants in order of relation from left to right: annalise, queen of the “vilebloods” of forsaken castle cainhurst (top left), lady maria (top middle, a cainhurst knight and “distant relative of the queen”), arianna, woman of pleasure (right; she is also the most distant descendant and prostitute. her clothing identifies her as nobility but she makes no mention of her relation to the castle whatsoever, unless you count telling a female hunter that she “doesn’t want to drag them down too”.). the bottom image is concept art of lady maria during her boss fight with a more exaggerated look that did not make it into the game.

Figure : the evolution of the “hunter” rune as seen on gravestones in pthumeru

i’m inclined to learn toward believing that yahar’gul, unseen village and hemwick charnel lane were late pthumerian settlements on the surface in service of cainhurst. this is based on the enormous sizes of the corpses in yahar’gul, the appearance of chalice dungeon pthumerians and creatures occupying the hidden city, and the sheer size of the hemwick grave women. though it can be hard to see due to all the murdering you that they’re trying to do, they too are slack–jawed, thin, and pretty pale. there’s other things that only become apparent by the time the hunter comes to visit, so we’ll hold out until then.

pthumeru, and its sister cities isz and loran, rose, peaked, and died leaving behind shambling corpses of the cities they once were. though they were always a civilization of catacombs, bones, and blood, each area developed a difference single minded fascination that drove them to ruin. the careless indulgence of the blood, the maddening need to understand the cosmic, and the self-deterministic fall into savagery would all play out again in the far, far future. we are entering a cycle of stagnation. and with stagnation, fromsoft wants to hammer home to the player in every single game, comes rot.

anyway: a bazillion years later or whatever. the cainhurst royals rule over a land that includes the victorian england-ish city of yharnam, named for the forgotten queen of pthumeru (this city has become “old yharnam” by time the player arrives). the main appeal of yharnam is its proximity to a university of bold, weird research. i don’t know if it was before or after the establishment of the school, but i think yet another meteorite crashed into yharnam, opening a hole into the dungeons for the first time in who knows how long, delivering magnetic iron to the yharnamites, and introducing the hapless dopes to the cosmic for the first time. in fact, maybe more than one fell; there are a few locations in yharnam that are strange and hint at a direct proximity to the chalice dungeons. we’ll talk about it as we get there. for now, let’s stick to the lakeside university of questionable science.

the school of byrgenwerth and its scholars were once an archeological and historical research center headed by an older scholar by the name of provost willem. during the course of their studies, either by happenstance or the aforementioned meteorological event, they discovered the pthumerian labyrinths. i believe the progression that the hunter makes in the dungeons is intended to mirror the original excavation and exploration of the tombs, meaning that that byrgenwerth, much like the player character, began their journey on the outer edges of the pthumerian civilization/tomb of the gods.

if true, then their experience must have been as confounding as it is to the player. they would have encountered the ancient pthumerians in a desiccated state, witch-y women with the ability to re-animate corpses, and, most intriguing of all, a bizarre flora/fauna creature that defied all understanding. this alien looking creature is something special, a class of creature called “kin” that can, in ways not yet known to the scholars, tap into the arcane cosmos. this can be experienced first hand by the player when, upon death, the creature sucks itself into a cosmic wormhole leaving behind its titular glowing flower and a small, vestigial chunk of its body. this flower appears to be the reason why these creatures can be found reliably in the large, oddly lush and well maintained gardens of the dungeons. in the concept art, the flower has a much more distinctive twist, making it the first known indicator of anti-clockwise metamorphosis. just pin that, for now.

the floral creature also leaves behind smatterings of a precious material called “arcane haze”. but…mysteriously, ONLY the creatures being maintained in the underground gardens drop this precious resource. the sole example found outside of the dungeons, wandering the grounds of byrgenwerth aimlessly, does not.

some things only grow in the labyrinth.

the true treasure of the labyrinths, however, was not flowers or gold, but blood.

further investigation by byrgenwerth revealed an unspecified “holy medium” that would spark a pathological fascination with the ruins: a substance called ritual blood, which does not coagulate. there is ritual blood of a presumed similar quality on an altar found near the church of the good chalice, but obviously is not THE exact same ritual blood sample from this specific expedition. i believe the player was intended to intuit the connections between the ritual blood, pthumeru and byrgenwerth by introducing these new concepts one after another during a conventional playthrough. after you first read the word “byrgenwerth” and are able to ask about it, you are then instructed by an npc to fetch the pthumeru chalice (and, coincidentally, will stumble on the ritual blood needed to satiate the chalice along the way).

critically, i do not think the first encounter with “the old blood” was from an exotic source; like most ritual blood in the game, it was likely discovered in an ornate coffin housing a pthumerian corpse. while “a blood that never hardens” may not be a bombastic discovery compared to “a blood that twists you into a fucked up creature and gives you super powers”, all of the subtext in the game suggests that trying to understand the mystery of the blood was a process that took years of experimentation and countless lives. surely, as a bloodborne lore junkie/fan/casual knowledge seeker you can intuitively understand the allure of incremental discovery that drove the slow downfall of the byrgenwerth scholars? is there no moment more satisfactory than the singular internal emotional rush that comes with truly, deeply understanding even just one sliver of a mystery?

unfortunately, there was a little bit of a snag: attempts to dig into the next layer of the labyrinth (central pthumeru) were halted by the aforementioned fucked up creature with superpowers; the first encounter with a beast. this was a significant moment in yharnam history. not just because it lead to the transcription of the first⁶ caryll rune, but because of the implications of the discovery that failed to impress on the scholars: “The discovery of blood entailed the discovery of undesirable beasts”. that is to say: where you find blood, you will find beasts. where you take blood, beasts will follow.

okay, fine. there’s nothing canon that says it was SPECIFICALLY the beast-possessed soul (BPS) in the labyrinth. we’ve been heavy with the italics this whole section. but it’s strongly implied and most of yharnam history is intentionally obscure, leaving much to the reader imagination. just bear with me.

i believe the BPS was once a labyrinth ritekeeper turned by the scourge, which would have made it the first (unwitting) known example of a cleric beast. if we consider the similarity in height (when the ritekeepers stand), the canon knowledge that individuals with close proximity to religion (as in loran as well) transform into their own unique horned monstrosities, and that the fire throwing ability used by the BPS is unique to pthumerians, it doesn’t seem completely implausible. if you really want to get nitty-gritty into this theory, the BPS also has pale, white skin under its fur, black nails, a slender figure, and an open, gaping mouth (er, muzzle). but the question remains: for what purpose would this introduction to this concept serve at this point in the narrative/game-play?

if byrgenwerth followed the same or similar progression we do into the dungeons, they would have encountered BPS on the first layer of the central pthumeru chalice dungeon after exploring the entirety of the topmost pthumerian labyrinth. by now, the player would have almost certainly been introduced to at least one cleric-type beast explicitly labeled as such and encountered multiple references to the cleric beat phenomenon in item descriptions. consequently the player would, eventually, be intended to realize the significance of the horns on this new specimen. in my proposed timeline, the byrgenwerth scholars would have no knowledge of this facet of beasthood until it was too late. instead, this moment would spur one byrgenwerth scholar named caryll to begin to transcribe “inhuman sounds” in symbols and “beast”, a product of this unique encounter, became the first caryll rune. the only BPS outside of the chalice dungeons⁷ that the hunter will encounter drops this rune. it’s his roar after all.

consequently, once the power of this rune became realized, it was one of the first to become banned. in another, related rune, caryll elaborated that “beast” is a “horrific and unwelcome instinct deep within the hearts of men” but leaves the reader to infer what that instinct might be. the characters belonging to institutions that shunned beasthood became the birthplace of twisted and malformed monstrosities…yet, there are a handful of yharnamite beasts who were eager to indulge in what the scourge offered them whose transformations were far less dramatic, perhaps even enviable. one could conclude that beasthood is much more forgiving to those who accept it, BPS included. what role this deliberate beast played in pthumerian society is not immediately clear, especially as the number of beasts remaining in the entirety of pthumeru can be counted on two hands.

so what to do about undesirable beasts?

of course, cainhurst already knew all about this dog blood bullshit. the royals were described as “long time imbibers of blood” in an item description of a weapon that has been around long enough to inspire other, shittier hunter weapons by the time you arrive on the scene. they already have a special class of servants (knights) who take care of any signs of beasthood bubbling up under their ranks with discretion. closer inspection of the kn ight’s garb reveals a blood red gemstone⁸ sewn into the cravat revealing cainhurst already had access to something the rest of yharnam was only beginning to discover: blood gems, little crystals that could be used to imbue weapons with greater power. whatever process causes the body to produce blood gems after death occurs nearly entirely in the chalice dungeons; there are hardly any blood gems to be found in the over-world. blood gems become stronger the deeper one heads into the labyrinth, terminating at “abyssal” blood gems.

cainhurst’s access to the dungeons might be in plain sight; there’s a weird valley at the entrance of the cainhurst map full of the worst enemy ever in the world, parasite larva, that dead ends in a strange way; its like a cave that collapsed. at its entrance is a corpse with a (unremarkable) blood gem to loot. perhaps this was once the entrance used to access pthumeru for blood and trinkets (and 8000000 statues, apparently), as evidenced by this body that has developed a weak blood gem from having died so close to the tombs. or maybe its just the royal worm pit. for the worms.

the miraculous abilities of the “old blood” in the labyrinth became the subject of fascination and research at byrgenwerth. at this point in time, the student body was appropriately wary of the substance. the overwhelming and horrific thirst for blood in pthumerian society is hard to ignore when there are corpses stacked haphazardly in enormous pools of stagnant red slime and rooms where exsanguinated bodies still hang from the ceiling in a loose pose that clearly evokes the “dangling, upside-down” nature of the hunter’s rune. this symbol from pthumerian society is a depiction of a body in the process of exsanguination. the quickest way to exsanguinate something is to cut a large artery, flip it, and let gravity take over. butchery 101.

its unclear if byrgenwerth was responsible for some/all of the central pthumeru bloodlettings or if they just learned the technique here. the potential benefits of collecting blood lead to the earliest incarnations of “hunters” as we know them. this rune would eventually be branded in the mind of anyone who “signs a contract” to become a hunter. if you think about it too hard you die and lose all of your blood (echoes). like when i try to do math.

^{1. the re-translation project’s re-translation of the pthumeru ihyll chalice item description states that the name “yharnam” is inherited by each queen.}

^{2. source}

^{3. the translated names at the bottom of this page identifies the rooms with empty cainhurst armors (number 10 in the list, arena) as “remains of a battlefield site”. this is literally the only interesting fact about chalice dungeon room names.}

^{4. source}

^{5. a rare, truly lousy translation. should be “bastard of cainhurst” (imo). as in the most dictionary definition sense of the word bastard as a child out of wedlock. the re-translation suggests “ancient bastard”.}

^{6. the english release says “one of the first” but the japanese is more direct: it’s the first official rune that caryll transcribed. “hunter” and the hunter’s mark may have been grandfathered in as such later. or not. what do i know.}

^{7. this didn’t fit well, but the BPS is an extremely odd character/creature and the game goes through great pains to demonstrate this. it appears only three times in the game and the story chalice dungeons: once in yharnam, once in central pthumeru as the first layer boss, and once in ailing loran as the first layer boss. that’s it.}

^{BUT: using root chalices, there is a chance to spawn a special BPS as a roaming encounter who attacks not only you but other enemies as well. it can be healed with an item used to heal co-operators.}

^{8. this item is not found in cainhurst in the released game, but its location in game files indicates it should have been.}

i may have bit off more than i can chew with this bloodborne lyrics thing

Posted on June 1, 2022July 7, 2022 by Bea

stupid bitch that i am, i assumed that the lyrics to several bloodborne soundtrack songs that are widely available online were sourced from somewhere official. it turns out this is not true. what actually happened is that like 7 years ago, random people on gameFAQs attempted to listen to/transcribe the lyrics they heard and no one since has challenged these interpretations EXCEPT ONE PERSON who somehow did a worse job. we’re going to call one set of lyrics “FAQs lyrics” and the other “sheet music lyrics”.

here’s the problems with the FAQ lyrics:

they do not know latin and are trying to transcribe it.
they do not know latin pronunciation is different from modern english.
they did not know there is a difference between ecclesiastical latin (which is what these lyrics are in) and roman latin (classic? i dont care).
most of the words they heard are not even words that exist
the translations are completely different from the original text and seemingly retrofitted to force “lore” into creation.

i am pissed. this is some of the sloppiest dipshit work i’ve ever seen and the fact that it was apparently accomplished by committee is even more infuriating. at no point did people think to do .01 second searches to even check if what they wrote down is a word in any language or to check a translation source other than just dumping it into google translate. the intellectual laziness on behalf of the original creators is bad enough, but seeing them reposted in a million different places as the real lyrics because no one bothered to check is depressing.

i did “hail the nightmare” myself after what felt like an eternity of listening to a song that is not a banger over and over and over and piggy-backing off the original in an attempt to create something that i can say fairly certainly is the most accurate version (not THE accurate version). i took a look at “laurence the first vicar” last night and it’s. goddamn it guys lol. goddamn.

but the thing is, here’s my problem:

i also dont know latin
i have a degree in drawing and a minor in english. at best my spanish is 3/5.
im stupid.
i cant hear shit.

my methodology is probably exactly the same as theirs: listen over and over until you want to die and try to determine what noises a chorus is screaming in a different language. then write down those noises and shuffle them around to make words. i use latin dictionaries and good old google translate because apparently every translation service now that uses them. but it’s the dictionary that makes the difference. and a latin translation guide. thank you so much to youtube nerds. what would we do without you.

this is the most author’s commentary i’ll get about the original guys who attempted to translate this but i would be seriously curious to know which, if any, had attended a catholic mass regularly at any point in their lives. we went on sundays when i was a kid and while the songs aren’t IN latin anymore, the musical structure of the hymns are the same. the original translators heard breaks in words where i heard none. i’ll try to explain more below.

if you want to try to follow along, here’s a guy with the wrong lyrics:

literally from 0:00 it’s wrong. the first line he has as “sic fili scite tibi vi sacramentum” which he’s translated as “so, you imposed the sacrament on the children”. wtf.

right off on “sic”, there’s no “c” sound to be heard (come on, you know “sic semper tyrannis”, the c is not silent) and while the next two are words that exist, they make no sense in the context of the rest of…uhhh. anything. there’s 0 clever little boys in bloodborne, they’re all stupid british people.

im pretty sure the word involved is actually “felix”, as in “lucky”. here’s where i fall apart: is it

conjugated? because all those conjugations sound VERY similar.
involve reflexive pronouns? these songs often address the listener so we get a lot of verbs that end with “-te”
getting munched up with a bunch of prepositions?? (e, et, si, and everyone’s favorite cum)

my best guess is “si felici te” which im fairly certain is closer to “if you are lucky”. but in a church (ecclesiastical) context, it’s more like “blessed”.

if you’re catholic and listening to this maybe you can tell what i mean by “they hear breaks in words” where i don’t. this also leads to them assuming each line is an individual statement instead of all the lyrics being a complete thought.

anyway. “tibi” is a word, good job. i had to triple check here the difference between “vi” and “vis” and it turns out i don’t think “vi” is a thing lol. it turns out it is “vis”. as in “vis a vis”. “strength”.

oh yeah, about the sheet music lyrics. they are very rarely useful as anything but a backup for ideas. mostly because the guy managed to mishear “sacramentum” as

no notes on the next section except ummm you spelled praemium wrong op -_-;;; geeze op.

anyway, my final take is:

SI FELICI TE TIBI VI SACRAMENTUM.

ERIT PRAEMIUM SANGUINE SANCTUM.

IF YOU ARE BLESSED WITH THE STRENGTH FOR COMMUNION

YOU WILL BE REWARDED WITH HOLY BLOOD

finally something that makes some fucking sense. there’s no way my conjugations are correct but this literally feels like someone gave me sliced white bread and ketchup and told me to make spaghetti. i dont think i can do this for all of them.

but: my methodology is sound. understand my pain.

justifying my own bloodborne iceberg p3

Posted on May 27, 2022July 7, 2022 by Bea

welcome back. in the time since the last post, elden ring came out. most people have already finished it, but i’m saving it as a very special treat until after i finish several overdue projects. at the pace i’m going, this should only take me until the rest of my life. those who have been following me on twitter know there’s just been a constant parade of things to do that never seem to end. so, of course, my fist move is to shove aside all my responsibilities so i can write about bloodborne for a few hours. (future bea here: i guess i meant “days”)

i’ll start off with something to chew on for da real bloodborne fans out there (i’ll do my best to break it down for bloodborne neonates so it sounds the least incomprehensible): let’s talk about Formless Oedon! the pervert great one.

(future bea here: i dont know why this is 1500 words. what the fuck)

here’s formless oedon.

he’s formless. no file photo available. he is specifically described as a great one who is “lacking form, exists only in voice”. unsurprisingly, the non-entity is also a near total mystery. if you scratch the surface of arianna’s quest, we can at least infer some information and make an educated guess about his role in her pregnancy (hint: it’s exactly what you think) AND his role in the lives of other bloodborne women (hint: see prior).

the first we hear of oedon is when we pick up the “oedon tomb key” after throwing panicked molotovs at father gascoigne until he dies. the key tells us that “…the church is abandoned, and some say that the residents of Oedon have all gone mad“, which i guess might still be a shocking surprise if you’re that early in the game and have never experienced a horror story in your entire life. everyone in this game is completely nuts, that’s half of the game. anyway: the only occupant of the oedon chapel (at first) is the appropriately named “oedon chapel dweller”. we love the oedon chapel dweller; he’s a little sweetie pie. he looks like someone put dog shit on a plate and then threw a towel on it to cover it up but that’s not his fault. he’s just as god made him.

look at that smile!

oedon chapel is a certified safe zone thanks to his hard work. so come on down and bring all your pals! no, really, you can. it’s the only place where you can send npcs and they have a chance at surviving until the end game. they’re not gonna be in great shape, but they will be there. most of them.

the npcs you can bring to oedon chapel are the suspicious man, the old woman, adella the nun, arianna and, if you’re a dummy or a sadist, the suspicious beggar. the only ones of interest to us (and oedon) are adella and arianna, two young women with exceptional blood. adella is a “blood saint”, a woman who has been specifically groomed to produce blood that’s. i don’t know. it’s better, okay. arianna has vileblood.

oedon still makes himself at home in his own chapel; on a balcony you can find the “secret” +4 rune “formless oedon” just sitting around in a chest. the description reads:

Human or no, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest
grade, and the essence of the formless Great One, Oedon.
Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously
seek the precious blood.

(it means “secretly”, i didnt know.)

the other runes have to be obtained by killing specific npcs. the +1 is found by sending gascoigne’s daughter to fauxsefka for experimentation. this is the daughter that gives you the music box. the music box shares the same awful melody during the fight with mergo’s wet nurse at the end of the game. mergo is presumed to be oedon’s child with the pthumerian queen (another woman with uncommon blood) due to the queen’s presence near the arena and mergo’s apparent formlessness. i still dont know why the music is the same. it can’t be because it’s a banger. c-can oedon be music as well as voice. i dont know. it’s scary.

anyway, the +2 and +5 runes are in pthumeru and pthumeru ihyll chalice dungeons. the final +3 is obtained from killing the oedon chapel dweller. nothing personal, kid.

now let’s talk about the other oedon rune: oedon writhe.

there are 3 version of oedon writhe. the first is found on adella the nun‘s corpse. the second is dropped by fauxsefka if you kill her before the blood moon. if you wait until after the blood moon, she drops a third umbilical cord with this description:

A great relic, also known as the Cord of the Eye. Every
infant Great One has this precursor to the umbilical cord.

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 were to ever
match Their greatness.

hmmm. i assume that fauxsefka stole this cord from willem so she could go solo, but now it also clearly reads as her motivations for her off-the-books experimentation. not sure that oedon was really into it though. i’m going to reasonably assume we don’t cut an umbilical cord out of her.

the final rune is in the pthumeru ihyll chalice dungeon. this is the level with both the queen and her screaming baby (presumed to be mergo). defeating her reveals the baby is stillborn. you know this bc you get it as a prize. whoopee.

so to recap v quickly:

formless oedon (for his bros): little girl, oedon chapel dweller, queen yharnam

oedon writhe (for his hos): yharnam again, adella, fauxsefka

“ahhhh!!” i can hear you screaming. “who cares!!” well: i think we can trace the lineage of arianna’s baby directly within the text of the game. like, of course we can reasonably assume it’s oedon because she’s just suddenly pregnant and no one in the chapel is going “holy shit did you see that monster impregnate arianna that was crazy”. also, when you kill her (non-formless, which is odd) child, the umbilical cord description reads:

Every Great One loses its child, and then yearns for a
surrogate, and Oedon, the formless Great One, is no
different. To think, it was corrupted blood that began this
eldritch liaison.

but why arianna? what made her so different that it succeeded? it can’t JUST be the vileblood; after all, annalise is right there waiting for oedon to give her a fucked up baby eating her vampire cummies or whatever the fuck she’s doing with blood dregs. it’s impossible to say for sure, of course, but arianna did one thing that no one else in the game did.

the chapel dweller is not popular with his fellow yharnamites. every npc ignores him. except…

Ahh, kind hunter. Thank you.
So, that lady, you told’er about this place?
Well, she.. she actually talks to me!
Well, only now and then, and she don’t mince words…
But… she’s a kind one, I can tell.
A good woman! Hee hee…

in hindsight perhaps making small talk with the guy whose god exists as a voice was poor judgement. i choose to believe that oedon exists also as the music box song and that’s why he has a worshipper rune (oedon writhe) in gascoigne’s kid and why that horrendous song shows up during the mergo’s wet nurse fight. can a god make a song be so bad that it forms a living tumor shaped like a baby in your body? bloodborne posits: yes.

arianna goes crazy after giving birth. if you consumed 4 or more of her blood, you get the unusual dialogue “i’ve never been happier…” before she loads up dark_souls_laugh.wav. arianna’s baby is a celestial child, a presumed infant larvae of ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos. these little critters are first encountered in the experimentation hall the choir called “the orphanage”. the purpose of the orphanage appeared to involve caring for the celestial children (which are labeled “kin” by the game, judging by blood color and the damage they take) as well as taking human children and mutating them into celestial emissaries for god knows what reason. honestly, the text in-game seems to suggest they just did it because they could. fauxsefka, a choir member, was attempting to do something similar with the people you send her.

i’m not sure what they were doing in the orphanage but i don’t think it was on the level. i wonder if there’s literally only one “womb that will be blessed with child” when the blood moon occurs, and every great one has to rush to be the first one in like it’s a wal-mart on black friday. maybe the choir was trying to min-max their chances of getting that baby by making the finest wombs in the cosmos. if so, then it’s funny (?) they got undercut by someone who wants to kill their seafood platter-looking baby with a brick.

the hunter, out loud, to no one: “okay”

weird detail: if you kill the celestial child, arianna dies as well with a blood curdling scream. but if you SHOOT the child, arianna screams and merely passes out. they’re two different animations?! and im pretty sure they’re not animations seen anywhere else.

lastly, i wonder if there’s anything to be gleaned from oedon’s connection with quicksilver bullets and their propensity for slaughtering beasts. all of oedon’s runes up your quicksilver bullets in some capacity, with the item description for the bullets noting that “…ordinary bullets have no effect on beasts, and so Quicksilver Bullets, fused with the wielder’s own blood, must be employed“. the rosamarinus, a device that sprays quicksilver mist, has an interesting description in light of all this:

A special weapon used by the Choir, high-ranking members
of the Healing Church.

Sprays a cloud of sacred mist, created by using blood-
imbued Quicksilver Bullets as a special medium.

Arias are heard wherever sacred mist is seen, proving that
the mist is a heavenly blessing.

“Oh, fair maiden, why is it that you weep?”

it does sing, as advertised.

oedon’s chapel repels all beasts because of the anti-werewolf incense, but that same incense is not found in the other churches and cathedrals. very odd…much to think about. perhaps…a rivalry…?

i think that is literally everything there is to say about formless oedon.

dear fucking god.

let’s just get into it.

the pile of laundry on the right is master willem. or “provost” according to the art book and some item descriptions. while his contemporaries split off to form the healing church for blood based worship, willem remained steadfast on maintaining his eyes-on-the-inside doctrine as the headmaster of byrgenwerth. you can’t really tell from the game but apparently he is terminally yucky when you meet him.

it’s not cum

willem facts: his blood is a pale grey. he has mushrooms growing on his back for some reason. and if you punch him enough times barehanded he’ll t-pose with the chair and it’s very funny.

oh yeah, the mushrooms. when we meet willem he’s in bad shape. you find him in his lunarium after obtaining the key with the description:

In his final years, Master Willem was fond of the lookout,
and the rocking chair that he kept there for meditation.
In the end, it is said, he left his secret with the lake.

it reads like he’s super dead. granted, not a lot of people have been to byrgenwerth lately, but i think people would have noticed if the guy in the huge rocking chair with the gold pope outfit died for real. but he’s not dead, he’s right there. rocking away and groaning wordlessly while trying to communicate that he wants you to go jump in a lake.

i’m not sure if we’ve talked about “phantasms” yet so i’ll give a quick descriptor: they are invertebrate familiars of the old ones. they are largely parasites and slugs. they make up a majority of the special arcane items in the game and some of the materials for chalice dungeon entry. they can be found in the lecture building (the augur of ebrietas), the orphanage (blacksky eye, pearl slugs, and a call beyond), and byrgenwerth (pearl slugs and the empty phantasm shell). all places dedicated to the study of the great ones and the evolution of mankind.

what happened to the phantasm in the shell? why does the eye rune willem drops after you atomize him in one hit have all this blue slime on it?

and why does that slime look exactly like the “dubious liquid medicine” blue elixir?

not too sure that’s willem, frankly. i don’t even think it’s anything sapient. just something that moved into a bigger shell when the opportunity arose.

enough of that. let’s get started. the good news about writing all of that is that, maybe. just maybe. the actual entries will be reasonably short.

doll bleeds paleblood

“seek paleblood to transcend the hunt” turns out to be the easiest part of the game. here’s the speedrun:

get killed by the werewolf in iosefka’s clinic
pick up the hunter’s weapon of your choice.
hit the doll*

behold! a paleblood guy!

the palest blood in the game belongs to the doll. it is undeniably and unmistakably #fff white.

it is NOT cum

we already discussed the moon presence and its connection to the phrase/name “paleblood” so i guess we can’t be too surprised when the lady it made turns out to bleed white gunk. its a very literal name.

okay. i am very sorry to inform you now that ahead of time, i wrote a large blood color explainer that doesn’t elucidate anything and only serves to create more questions. but we’re going to go over it now because it does a good job of demonstrating some of the weirder conscious and deliberate aesthetic choices made by the fromsoftware team. the greater purpose of this in the grander scheme of things is to help explain how we differentiate great ones from their distant relatives, kin. it’s not easy. lots of arguing about this still in many places on the internet.

there are 3 kinds of enemy classes: null, beast and kin. these rules largely determine what kind of elemental damage to do against the target, but some very odd and specific choices were made regarding what is considered kin (lesser or manufactured beings not unlike great ones) and what is not. kin tend to have grey blood; humans, pthumerians, beasts and great ones (?!) have red blood. examples of unusual red blood choices include: rom’s body, the brain of mensis (well…it is a legitimate great one after all), ebrietas, moon presence, kos, and the orphan.

“kin” within the fiction ranges from man-made attempts to communicate/replicate the great ones to less great celestial beings. human-made kin were not only intended to facilitate audiences with great ones, but as stepping stones toward the goal of evolving humanity past its current potential. humans can be made kin if they “line their brain with eyes”. the archetypal kin have alien anatomy and arcane powers (for this reason they are often the arcane magic blue in hue). examples include celestial emissaries, the false flower centipede, the crawlers from the nightmare frontier, celestial larvae, and brain suckers.

unusual examples of kin include rom’s head (?), the non-boss amygdalas, winter lanterns and ebrietas again. thats right. she does both. so do all the fish people in the dlc village. i’ll mention that slime scholars “bleed” grey goo but it’s more likely just more goo since they are not counted as kin. they are very failed attempts to transcend…unlike master willem who as far as i know is not classified by the game as kin, but bleeds the same as them.

THAT’S cum

now, you might be thinking “hold on, what about mergo’s wet nurse? she’s a great one, right?” probably not? she doesn’t bleed anything she just emits like, a black smoke. this smoke is also emitted by the wandering nightmares (canonically, just scrap parts of the nightmare that are running around reality), the “mad ones” conjured by the witches of hemwick and the ghost ladies from cainhurst and the labyrinth.

*okay you might need a point of insight before you do this. in that case either make a beeline for the madman’s knowledge in the sewers or go look at the cleric beast.

“hail the nightmare”, translated

if it isn’t bad enough that bloodborne has lore in the latin lyrics of the boss music, the latin is also terrible and nearly incomprehensible

translation by dragoman525 on reddit. he claims to be a latin professor and i dont know why someone would lie about that so im deferring to his expertise.

all together now!

Solo: Maledictus O cursed one,

Chorus: Donum libas You pour out your gift offering,

Solo: Inficimur we are infected!

Chorus: Maledictus bestia O cursed beast;

Solo: Maledictus O cursed one,

Chorus: Pater, do si donas O Father, I am giving, if you are giving,

Solo: Inficimur we are infected!

Chorus: Argentum aquae in tenebris. quicksilver in the darkness.

Chorus: Mater, sanguine O Mother, from the blood

Redemptoris a se of the Redeemer, your people

Exiet, exiet, pleba tua sa—(unknown) shall come forth, shall come forth safe from themselves.

Chorus: Vale, vale, Farewell, farewell,

Solo: Inficimur We are infected!

Chorus: In tenebris aquae. waters in the darkness,

Solo: Maledictus O cursed one,

Chorus: Et argentum aquae. and quicksilver,

Solo: Inficimur we are infected!

Chorus: Et argentum aquae. and quicksilver.

Chorus: Sanguine! In the blood!

it’s a good start but even as a layman i can tell there’s problems. like where the hell did the “o”s come from? while he intended to translate with the spirit of the song as he understood it in mind, i believe he has only a passing familiarity with bloodborne. i’m going to take a red marker to this with all the misplaced confidence of a youtube essayist.

Maledictus! We are cursed!

Donum libas! Pour your offering!

Inficimur! We are corrupted!

Maledictus bestia! Cursed beast!

Maledictus! We are cursed!

Mater, do si donas! Mother, I give if you give! (?)

Inficimur! We are infected!

Argentum aquae tenebris! Dark silver waters!

Ave Sanguine! Hail blood!

Redemptoris nostrae! Our Redeemer!

Exiete! Go forth!

Exiete! Flebatur (?) Go forth! something about weeping

Vale, vale! Farewell, farewell,

Inficimur! We are tainted

E tenebris aquae! From the dark waters!

Maledictus! We are cursed!

E argentum aquae. by the silver waters!

Inficimur! We are infected!

E argentum aquae. by the silver waters!

Sanguine! Blood!

notes: “donum libas” seems a little undersold in the original; “libas” is like pouring something for a sacred ritual. like pouring one out for a homie. “do si donas” isn’t anything, so i must be hearing that wrong. “donas” is like “you gift” and not really “you give” (i think?). that line that’s impossible to hear is truely impossible to hear. i have no idea how that guy got “quicksilver” from “silver water”. i like it, but i don’t get where it came from.

frankly the least comprehensible parts are the silver water bits but that’s def what they are saying. idk where “in” came from in the original.

i have cleaned up a lot of this including finding the right words that made actual sense. i want you all to know i was just doing to copy and paste the other guy’s work, but now it’s 5 am and i’m still hacking away at this latin like i’m a little british preparatory school boy from 1918 and my test is tomorrow. i feel semi-confident with this. why did i do this.

gerhman’s leg

oh my god, this one is easy for real. the dlc sends you back to the time of the old hunters and you can get their special pants as armor. the item description reads:

Old hunter trousers that protected countless hunters from the beasts in an older age.

A widespread belief of the period was that “beast blood crept up the right leg”, and this led to the double-wrapped belt.

there’s two other leg armors that feature the belts. one is the decorative version of the old hunter trousers which are “decorated with brass trinkets.”

At the time, some hunters believed that certain metals would ward off beast blood.

On a night of the hunt, it is no wonder that people would resort to superstition.

funnily enough, the right leg is the one your character slams all his blood vials into. i think i figured out why it creeps up the right leg, guys. the only other trousers with belts are djura’s ashen hunter trousers which are also covered in ash to “ward off blood”. taking no chances, very wise.

gehrman himself has a right peg leg.

i cannot believe he’s wearing black shoes with brown pants. everything about him sucks.

i love imagining gehrman learning about germ theory and getting extremely pissed off.

you know, you might not have thought about it, but there’s another place where beasthood infects: the left arm.

the sullied bandage from your blood ministration places the IV in your left arm. the cleric beast has that one really big arm that everyone makes the masturbation jokes about. check out the sleeves of your hunter armors…they’re wrapped in bandages…! the generic huntsman enemies in central yharnam also have one really jacked up left arm where they have been, presumably, getting their blood drips.

no half of your body is safe from the beast scourge, apparently.

hunter’s rune depicts a hanging corpse

this is the hunter’s rune (or mark).

if you want to go back to the hunter’s dream, just think about this until you die.

the hunter’s mark has ancient origins. it appears in the deepest parts of the labyrinth, including yharnam’s…wedding altar? in her boss room.

this straight up looks like a youtube thumbnail

i’m not getting into marriage in this post. that’s for another iceberg tier and is probably another 50,000 words.

the gravestones in the labyrinths reveal the evolution of the symbol over time: (source)

it used to be much more obvious that it was depicting a hanging man. this method of exsanguination was clearly popular in parts of yharnam; for example, (sources: 1 2 3) they can be found in the labyrinth, the fishing village, and old yharnam.

it’s not explicit why this is done. the hunters mark in your inventory essentially kills you (the bold hunter marks, the finite version, do not) and the rune version marks one as a “hunter of hunters” (self-explanatory). i have two theories. this is:

exsanguination as a means of preventing the dead from rising (the locked coffins around yharnam imply this is a big problem lately). i feel like it would be pretty hard to come back from the dead once there’s no blood in you.
exsanguination for yummy blood mm tastey

next!

madman’s knowledge is a slug

it’s slug.

rom’s real eyes

rom is gross.

looking closely at her head reveals:

the many eyes dotting her head and back are human (this scans with the in-text suggestions that rom was an ascended student created by byrgenwerth somehow).
she has two primary eyes above her slit nose and leech mouth. forming a face.

rom is a dud. but one of the more impressive pupa they managed to cultivate (her smaller spider-lings and the garden of eyes fly enemies also have human eyes, hinting that they were once human and now are even more fail versions of rom). she was blessed with an arsenal of arcane powers that she can use to near effortlessly send you and mensis reject damien back to your ancestors, but they sort of completely destroyed her brain in the process of making her kafka-esque. when you first enter the boss arena, she doesn’t even react to you until you hit her and then she panics and teleports away (women are always doing this).

the original japanese name is more direct and calls her an idiot. “vacuous” is a good word for english, since it also reflects why she remained useful to the bygenwerth scholars: she’s good at hiding secrets and keeping undead queens you pilfered from a labyrinth hostage.

knowing that there are multiple amygdalas running around yharnam, this image…does something. i was going to say “explains ___” but i realized i had no idea what it was explaining. it explains nothing, it’s just an observable pattern that implies a tenuous connection and invites you to speculate on it. they got me again!

what did she mean by this

winter lanterns have the doll’s body

as described on the tin:

hey dude! i’m a faerie! let me in!

yes, it’s got the brain of mensis as a hat as well. this image doesn’t show the winter lantern’s legs, but they’re just multiple tentacles fashioned into “legs”. another very mysterious repeating motif. what the fuck are “winter lanterns” (we know where the name came from, long story)? were they trial runs for the working version of the doll? are they the remains of the patients in the research hall (they ARE in the dlc after all and seem to be entirely confined to the nightmare)? who is plopping these brains onto a porcelain version of gehrman’s sexual fantasy? are they just doing it to be random?

the world……may never know. good, we need something to argue about sometimes.

eileen and djura once dreamed

kind of a wet fart to end on; it’s simply not a very compelling revelation. maybe it is if you’re still under the impression that the dream is personalized in some way. to be fair, these are very easy to miss; you only hear the dialogs confirming these under certain conditions.

when you’re killed by eileen in the grand cathedral at the end of her quest, she says the following:

You still have dreams? Tell the little doll I said hello.

basically “tell your wife i said hi”. eileen please, im already dead.

djura has two lines of dialog about the hunter’s dream. the first is spoken during his friendly encounter, which you have to activate by sneaking in the back way.

I no longer dream, but I was once a hunter, too.

the second is another kill quote:

I should think you still have dreams?

Well, the next time you dream, give some thought…

the “thought” he’s referring to is the fact that beasts were once people. he’s still reeling from this discovery, somehow. i figured that out the millisecond i saw a werewolf and said “that’s a werewolf”. maybe djura blew his head up one too many times like greg kelly.

when djura realized he was slaughtering sick people (technically i guess, i don’t think they’re getting better dude), he quit the hunt and could no longer return to the dream. eileen became disheartened by the gradual, steady corruption of her former hunting partners from their excessive blood use so she took on the “hunter of hunter” mantle to assure them a dignified death. much more important than your stupid dream. it seems as though the vast majority of hunters kill and kill and kill endlessly until they are killed or driven mad or transformed. only a rare few break the cycle, however they choose to do so.

final word count: 4577. see you next time. bye.